


thou sighs't not wind

by endofmeandeverything



Series: A Place Apart [1]
Category: The Hobbit RPF
Genre: AU, M/M, Merpeople
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-03-31 16:23:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3984817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endofmeandeverything/pseuds/endofmeandeverything
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An accident leads Richard into a world he never knew existed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 24 October

_3:10 a.m._

Richard had one very big problem that routinely conflicted with his desire to go through life as part of the scenery and nothing more, and it happened to be his dearest friend.  Graham let insults to his own person roll like water from a duck’s back, but when it came to others his protectiveness nurtured a ferocious streak.

This particular evening Richard was pleasantly drunk and ambling along the riverside with Graham jostling Adam at his side and both of them engaged in meaningless chatter.  (Richard was sure that even were he of mind to pay attention, he wouldn’t be able to follow the rambling jokes.  He was only lucky they’d lost Aidan and Dean some hours ago, or Richard was sure he’d be headed straight to an after-hours club and not home and blushing at significantly cruder humor.)  He was sated with good food, good wine, and good company and looking forward to nothing more than falling into bed and sleeping until noon.  Fresh off a successful run of _Macbeth_ , he longed to fill the coming weeks with a trip home and some well-needed rest.

“Oi, Rich, are you halfway around the world already?”  Graham slung an arm around his shoulders to pull him into the drunken sway he and Adam carried on.  Richard’s additional clumsy step nearly sent them all into the street.

“In bed,” Richard replied.  “Which is still too far away for my liking.”

“Get the old man to bed, then,” Adam teased.  Graham hooted with laughter and nearly sent them al off their feet again.  Perhaps he was an old soul, but it sounded like the perfect end of a lovely evening to Richard.

Unfortunately, the universe had other plans for him.

Noise from across the street barely registered; it wasn’t so late that the firefly young art students drunk of cheap beer and bitter neon concoctions had yet gone home.  The lid of a trash bin banged loudly and a cacophony of voices punctuated by honks and the occasional trill of laughter drifted across the road.  Through the haze of wine and a long night, Richard couldn’t make out anything but that it was an escalating argument.  Not for the first time, he wondered where people got all that anger from. 

“Someone’s not having a good night,” Adam observed.  He tripped over his own foot.  “Poor girl, her boyfriend’s got a bone to pick.”

Graham halted.  His arm tightened around Richard’ shoulder as he swung around to take in the scene unfolding in an alley across the street.  Bathed in crimson light spilling from the back door of a club still pounding out music, a group of young men had penned two girls against the brick façade.  Richard’s stomach churned unpleasantly as one of them slammed his hand into the wall and “fucking bitch” sounded clearly in his ears.

He glanced over at Graham and saw telltale lines around his mouth.

The girl’s friend had caught their attention and turned pleading toward him despite the grip one of her assailants had on her wrist.  She seemed about to open her mouth and call for help and Richard was about to interrupt her with a suggestion involving phoning the police rather than diving headfirst into a fight already in the making.

Graham let both of them go and squared up to let his impressive height and bulk speak for itself.

“Oh, shit,” Adam said.  He hiccoughed.  It seemed an accurate enough assessment of situation.

“Hey!  Hey, you!”  A cab whizzed by in the street as Graham shouted.  When Adam and Richard both reach to to grab hold of his shirt and curtail the intervention before it began he shrugged them both off more enthusiastically than was his wont.  Richard stumbled under Adam’s clumsy weight and fell hard against the wrought-iron rail that separated the promenade from a long fall and the black water of the Hudson below.  The sound of rushing water made his ears ring, and Richard shoved himself aware from his precarious perch and gasped for breath.  He hated the river, beautiful as it was from a distance.

His attention was drawn to a more immediate problem when Adam mumbled: “Oh no.”

 “Wha’ d’you want, gramps?”  A boy in a green shirt too thin for the weather broke away from his fellows.  He was obviously the youngest of the lot and couldn’t be old enough to drink, not by a long-shot, but even from across the street Richard could see that way he staggered and the flush in his face.  His comrades jeered and urged him on.  For a moment Richard felt sorry for him, too young for all this mess and still tangled up in it somehow; the look on his face reminded Richard of a puppy being praised for piddling in garden and not on the carpet.  The pity dissipated when he saw the way the girls clutched at one another, the handbag thrown to the ground and spilling coins and makeup into the dirty water leaking from the bottom of the trash bin.  The silk of her blouse drooped from her shoulder and the dangling threads told Richard it wasn’t a fashion decision she’d made on her own.

“Let her alone, yeah, and we’ll all be on our way.”  The growl in Graham’s voice made it clear that it wasn’t a suggestion.   Too intoxicated with alcohol or youth or the heady combination therein, the pack of young men left their quarry to meander across the street and only narrowly avoided being mown down by a driver significantly more sober than themselves.  The girl dropped to her knees and gathered her things, shoving them willy-nilly into her bag and not even bothering to right her clothes before her friend dragged her of down the street to hail a cab.

Adam tugged away to watch her go, but Richard was sick with worry.  Intimidating as Graham was—and a handy brawler to boot—Richard and Adam were significantly less physically inclined and they were outnumbered nearly two-to-one.

“It this wise?” Richard mumbled, wrapping one hand around Graham’s wrist.  He received a patently disbelieving look for his trouble, one that made him ashamed to hold his silence.  He reminded himself that violence rarely sorted anything (except in Graham’s life).

“Business of yours?” one of the kids asked.  He twirled a lighter fluidly in his fingers and hopped up onto the curb.  With his mates at his back he thrust his face up into Graham’s own, as if the several inches of difference in their heights made no difference to him.

Graham gave ground and forced Richard to do the same.  Rather than mollify the lads, the gesture seemed to whet their appetite.  Richard took what comfort he could in the fact that Graham didn’t seem worried.  “Not so much.  Just wondering what the likes of you are bothering her for.  Didn’t seem like she was any business of _yours_ either.”

“Just shut up,” Richard pleaded.  “Look, it’s over, let’s just get to ours?”

“Listen to your fuck-buddy—“

“Yeah, man, you got time to run.”

This apparently qualified as a joke, because the youngest of them guffawed and began to cough before turning around and being sick all over the pavement.  But for a few mean-spirited curses this was ignored.  The circle around them pressed tighter.  Richard was too aware of the rail at his back and the slowing stream of pedestrians doing the intelligent thing and continuing on their way without intervening.

“You boys heading home?”   Graham knew when too much was too much, but Richard worried it was too late to defuse the situation.  One of the boys cracked his knuckles, another chuckled.  The youngest wiped vomit off his shirt.  “No more chasing after little girls?”

“What you know about it?”  This kid’s eyes were pale and strange and swimming ; his face was lined with .  “Bitch took my kid away, you know, plopped him right in some other guy’s lap and now who’s ‘Daddy,’ huh?  You think she’s not gonna get what’s coming to her?”

His friends grumbled agreement and Richard pitied the girl.  He wondered how many times she’d been cornered on a dark night and people had simply walked by.  Despite the trouble they were in, he was grateful for Graham’s fatherly demeanor and hoped she locked her door tonight.

Richard fought down the fear choking him and stepped back, even closer to the rail, but the youngsters were closing in fast and before he could think of what to say that might get them out of here none the worse for wear, Graham’s head snapped to the side and he staggered; the man who threw the punch jumped at him and wrapped an arm around his neck, sending him to the ground in an impressive feat considering how much weight Graham had on the man.

 “Shit,” Richard groaned as Adam shouted a protest and the others joined the fray.

He held up one desperate hand in an attempt to put pause to the red-headed kid lunging for him, fumbling for his phone in his jacket pocket, sure that the threat of police intervention would call him off, when pain shot through his head and he collided with the pavement; his palms and knees burned and his breath left him in a pained grunt as a foot collided with his ribs.

His first instinct was to raise his hands and protect his head, but he could hear Graham grunting and the young men whooping and swearing, and he staggered to his feet to kick his assailant away.  He felt like a thug as he watched the kid go trip backward with a split lip and bloodied nose.  It wasn’t enough to deter him; he staggered up and lurched to grab Richard’s lapels and slam his forehead into Richard’s; his vision swam as his spine bent against the rail.  The rush of water was all he could hear.  Blood pounded in his temples and spilled into his mouth.

 _Fucking Graham and his fucking chivalry_.  

Adam was shouting, his voice growing higher and higher in pitch until it was cut off.  The world spun around him and Richard wondered vaguely if he was concussed; he couldn’t catch breath as a fist met his solar plexus again and again.  He threw the young man away from him only to be leapt on by another.

He heard Graham shouting and saw two of the men on the ground, one groaning, the other swearing and trying to gain his feet.  The iron rail dug sharply into his back and he felt sick as a hand wrapped around his throat to cut off the rising sour wine.

He couldn’t breathe, he could hear Graham grunt, and then the full weight of another’s man’s body collided with him and he felt the ground go out from underneath him as he tumbled over the hand rail.  He cried out, grabbing for any handhold, any foothold, and cold air and colder water rushed up to meet him with a sudden violent impact that blacked out all the light from the city above.

 

_?_

He came to coughing up bile and the water of the Hudson.  His throat and nose burned as he gasped desperately for breath that would not come and tried to make his head stop spinning.  The ground shifted under him, loose gravel slipping under his grasping palms as he sucked in air.  He was aware only of pain in every extremity.

From very far away came the sound of Graham and Adam shouting.  “—a light!  Get a fucking—!”

“—call—”

A heavy hand rested between his shoulders.  Water still trickled through his nose and throat and every attempt to speak ended in violet coughing that brought more vile stuff up from his lungs.  He blinked his eyes but there was nothing to see.  The moonlight illuminated the jagged peaks of broken concrete blocks littered with garbage and dead fronds of grass. Raindrops splashed here and there as the night sky opened on him.

He was shaking too hard to move, but someone gripped his shoulders tightly and guided him onto his back so he could look up at the man who had pulled him from the water.

He was young, his eyes gleaming in the pale light and wet dark hair sticking to his brow and neck.  One thick brow was raised in question.  Rain fell onto his bare shoulders and from there slid over pale skin to drip into Richard’s eyes.  

What was the man doing half naked in this frigid weather, seemingly unaffected by the wind that bit easily through sodden clothing?  Richard himself couldn’t feel any of his limbs and became aware that he was trembling so violently his teeth clattered.  He coughed again and rasped: “What’re—who’re—?”

The man cocked his head, then shook it and spattered Richard with yet more of the foul black water that still curled around his feet and threatened to drag him from his precarious perch among the broken concrete lining the riverside.  His terror of falling in gave him the strength to wrest free of the eddies swirling around his feet and to safety of solid ground beneath him.  His clothes stuck to every inch of his skin.

The man bent over him again, hands on either side of Richard’s head as he raked his gaze from the tip of Richard’s head to his toes and then back again.  He was long and lean, like a dancer, and at least as tall as Richard himself.  Richard shook the foolishness from his mind.  Not a dancer, he thought, a swimmer and a damn good one.   “You’re with the Coast Guard, then?”  His throat burned with every word.  He could barely speak through his chattering teeth.

The man shook his head against and parted his lips, yet no sound escaped.    He held up helpless hands. 

Deaf, then.  And half-naked as he was, definitely not Coast Guard.  What kind of lunatic leapt into the Hudson after another?  They both should have drowned.  Apparently he was as strong a swimmer as he looked.

Sirens split the early morning air and Richard turned his face up.  The flashing lights of emergency vehicles brings tears to his eyes and he has to look away from the flashing red and blue seemingly miles above his current nest.  He can hear Graham shouting “hurry” and “he fell” and “someone pulled him out” and Adam trying to calm him.

 “—fell.  There, can’t you go any bloody faster, man?”  Graham bellowed.  “Richard and—oi, hands off me, get them out of the water—no, I’ve never seen him before—Cant we do this after?”

Long ropes flew out from over the handrail to flop slap against the wet rock.  Richard reached out, but his frozen fingers couldn’t feel even the coarse texture of the rappelling rope.  Doubtless he and his erstwhile knight in shining armor were both headed to the hospital, he realized, likely to be treated for a case of hypothermia and, in his own case, a concussion.  While the embarrassment of the waiting crowd and fussing medics wasn’t a welcome thought, the idea of medication to take the ache from his head and battered limbs was a welcome one.

Rather than being pleased to see their imminent rescue, the man at his side reached out and took the rope in one trembling hand.  His lower lip quivered before he clenched his jaw and looked up.  Richard couldn’t decipher the look the man bestowed on him, nor the panic apparent in his features as he turned his gaze upward again.

He pointed upward and slender fingers tangled in an elaborate pattern that must have formed words Richard couldn’t understand.  He smiled as best he could and nodded.  “Can you speak?” he asked.  He had to duck his head to force the man to look at his lips.  The man only repeated his question, and Richard shook his head.  They were at am impasse.

“We’re all right!” Richard tried to shout, but his voice would not rise above a hoarse croak.  He could see the orange of an emergency bed following two figures in slow descent, and reached out to pat his new friend’s hand.

His skin was ice cold, but he wasn’t shivering or showing any sign he felt the frigid wind that so tore through Richard’s sodden clothing.

 “They’re just coming to get us.”

Instead of soothing the man, the approach of the emergency personnel seemed to terrify him.  He twisted his wrist free of Richard’s grasp and wormed his way back toward the river.  Surely he wasn’t getting back in?  Why would he—

“Are you all right down there!”

The white beams of flashlights sought them out.

“What’s the matter?” Richard rasped.  The man’s struggles were jerking him closer and closer to the water but he refused to let go. 

Richard’s heart stopped as the small searchlights illuminated the vision before him.

What he’d thought was a kindly young man stopped abruptly at the trim muscle of his waist, and below—Richard could hardly believe his eyes.  His mouth fell open as he gazed upon a tail—two meters, maybe more!—in length, draped sinuously across the rubble.  It gleamed gold and green when the lights shone upon it, flecks of gold winking here and there and the fin nearly transparent.

“No,” he murmured.  “It’s impossible.”

The man let out a piteous wail and writhed awkwardly down the sharp edges of concrete in an ungainly escape.

Another call: “Are you all right down there?”

The voices overhead faded into unintelligible blather as Richard’s hands slipped across chilled skin and he tried to grab at the creature slipping away into the water again.  His fear faded beneath wonder.  “No,” he whispered, “no, wait.”

The _thing s_ hook his head and brushed off every attempt to stop him.  Lines of fear bracketed his mouth.

“No—!”  Richard couldn’t find the words to make him stay.

The man was sliding back down, the waters parting to engulf him again.  He disappeared beneath the surface as if he were never there.  His fear tamped beneath enchantment, Richard plunged his hand into the water as if he could grab a handful of hair or skin.

A mere moment later a head and shoulders appeared above the surface, eyes fixed on Richard’s face.  “No?” he asked.

So he could speak.

“Don’t go,” Richard begged.

“No,” the vision repeated, and disappeared again into the darkness.

_7:49 a.m._

Graham wouldn’t stop apologizing.  Weak with cold and the fading effects of his fight, his fall, his wine, and his hallucination, Richard desperately wished he would.  His head was pounding and all he wanted was his bed.

“Please.  It wasn’t you.”

“Was,” Graham rumbled.  “Should have left it alone.”  He put a hand under Richard’s elbow to help him out of the cab but Richard shook him off.  He wasn’t an invalid, only sore and tired and feeling his years more than he ought.

“You wouldn’t be you if you had,” Richard said by way of apology.  He smiled, hoping he didn’t feel as wan and pale as he looked.  “Go home, Graham, you’ve been up as long as I have.  Let’s both get some rest.”

He touched the bruise darkening on Graham’s jaw and knew there were others to match scattered beneath his clothes. They both needed their beds, though it was doubtful Graham would take to his without the application of significant force.  Richard’s couch was comfortable enough, and if it wasn’t his bed was more than large enough for the both of them: it wouldn’t be the first time they’d shared a bed in their long years together.

He admitted defeat.  “You’d better come in.  But you’re putting the tea on.”

It turned out the eggs weren’t past their expiry date and Graham made passable plates of try toast and scramble while Richard hunted for clothes.  Clean and dry, they settled into the couch with their plates and tucked in.  Richard hadn’t realized how famished he was until he paused mid-bite and realized Graham had spoken through his own mouthful.

“Hm?”

After a hefty gulp of tea, Graham spoke again.  “So who was that bloke?”

“What ‘bloke’?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, you know it won’t work.  The one who dragged your out of the river.”

There it was: immutable proof that that thing that had saved Richard’s life wasn’t just a product of his abused brain.  His head gave a throb as if to remind him it was still liable to falter.  No easy lie came to his tongue.  Richard hadn’t expected one to: he was, as Graham reminded him, a shit liar.

“Dunno.”  He took another large mouthful to cover his lapse.  “Madman, I suppose.  Dove straight back into the water.  Olympic swimmer or something, out for strength training.”

“Pretty sure that’s against the rules,” Graham said.  Heaving a satisfied sigh, he set his plate down on the coffee table and settled in to watch Richard finish his own breakfast.

“So’s lying to the police.”

When they rescue workers had surfaced with Richard—quite humiliated and unable to get a word in edgewise as Graham gave everyone in earshot a good tongue-lashing—and  no one else, they’d been ready to dive back down and find the other stranded man.  Only after Richard had managed to convince himself that there had _been_ no other man could he find the voice to speak and assure everyone else he’d dragged his own sorry self out of the river.  Graham knew him better than that, know that panic would have frozen his limbs even if the impact had not, but Richard banked on his silence and received it (perhaps in recompense from the universe for having gotten him into that sorry state to begin with).  After a moment’s pause, Graham admitted that with the fight and the night and the fact that he was pretty obviously intoxicated, he might have been seeing things.  Neither the medics nor the police believed them, saying it should have been impossible to survive such a fall, much less retain consciousness and mobility enough to swim against the current.

Eventually they’d left Richard and Graham to be taken to the hospital for a rigorous check-up and went back to searching for a man even Richard no longer believed existed.

“ _You_ lied to the police,” Graham said, “I just covered for you.”

“I believe they call that ‘obstruction of justice.’  And it would technically be a lie.”

“You can technically thank me for not telling them your brains were scrambled and they better go back down there and pull the hero out for his accolades.”

“I don’t think saving a drunken idiot from falling into the Hudson is quite that lofty,” Richard murmured.  “Besides, it was only me.  I must’ve blacked out, something like that, but it wouldn’t be the first time a man’s will to live made him stronger, would it?”

“You aren’t fooling me, Rich.  I’m just trying to sort who you think you’re protecting.  And why.”

Richard rolled his eyes.  “Let me have that plate.”

Graham trailed him into the kitchen to watch him wash up.  “Was it—an ex?” he tried. 

God, but his tap water took ages to heat up.  He swore the next time his agent asked him to take something higher-paying he’d take her up on the offer, even if the part involved singing and dancing.

“A con-man?  An escaped convict.  And you, my poor noble man, just couldn’t turn him in after he saved your skin and so you let him go.  He’ll have been a murdered, and now you’re alive and some suburban family in Jersey’ll be done in because of you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Richard chastened.

“I’ve got it!” Graham clasped both his shoulders and seemed to be considering a brotherly shake.  Richard’s head wouldn’t bear it, so he ducked away before his brain got another good toss around his skull.  “It was a super-hero, eh?  Skintight suit and all?  And poor Richard swooning?  Was he handsome.”

Richard just stared, unable to determine whether or not he was being had, but Graham cracked a grin first and they both had a god laugh.  The only unfortunate side-effect of that was an increased throbbing in his head and the sudden urge to vomit.  Richard promised himself no laughing until the concussion abated.

“Get to bed.  You obviously need the sleep.”

The prospect seemed to take precedence over last night’s mystery, because Graham loped off toward the bedroom without so much as an invitation.  “Left side,” he said as he disappeared around the door frame.


	2. 31 October

_6:05 a.m._

“ _And now a story in the spirit of Halloween!_ ”

“ _That’s right, Joan, a story none of us could believe!_ ”  Tom Baricella’s voice was unbearable, Richard thought.  He took a long draught of his tea and wondered why he bothered with the morning news.  Never informative, always delivered in much too cheery a tone for the hour.

“ _Police have been searching for the body of a swimmer presumed drowned after the miraculous rescue of a man who fell into the Hudson River last week.  Though witnesses and the victim himself stated that there was no rescuer present, officials didn’t find their story plausible and when the hero failed to present himself, he was presumed dead and a small contingent of officers set out to retrieve and identify the body.  What the manhunt revealed is beyond everyone’s imagination!_ ”

“ _Yes indeed.  To the astonishment of all involved, in the early hours this morning the police’s trawling nets captured not a body, but a living, breathing myth: New York’s very first mermaid!_ ”

“ _Mer_ man _, Tom.”_ Joan Brown’s shrill laughter emanated from the television.

Richard’s cup hit the floor.  He raced through to the sitting room and stared in disbelief at the shaky camera footage splashed across the screen.

“ _You heard her, ladies and gentleman.  Here you can see the creature retrieved at approximately four-thirty this morning, as public officials and a group of marine biologists from Long Island University attempt to transport it to a waiting facility on the university’s campus.  I believe those are graduate students assisting in the handling, there; I’ll bet their dissertations will be some of the best this century!”_

Richard could do nothing but stare.  In blurry footage obviously taken on some lucky runner’s smartphone, the man who had pulled him from the river and forced the water from his lungs that fateful night struggled violently against ropes too thick to break.  The camera zoomed in shakily and Richard could see lines of bright blood—red as any man’s—streaking grasping palms.  Even with the unsteady photography, Richard could see the translucent webbing between those long fingers and wondered how he hadn’t seen them before.  He choked when he saw the thinnest membrane between small and ring fingers torn and dangling.

They hadn’t edited out the woman behind the camera gasping and murmuring: “Look at _that_!”

_“Authorities are currently unsure on long-term holding procedures for the discovery; immediate isolation will occur as with any rare specimen under the observation of top professionals here in New York City.  One can only hope that once the researchers have had their fun, an exhibit will be opened to the public.”_

Onscreen the net nearly snapped free as the man convulsed and sent three men sprawling with one tremendous lash of his tail.  The man’s mouth opened and he squeezed his eyes closed; Richard could tell he was crying out, but the audio had been removed.

“ _Be careful what you wish for, Joan!  Looks like our newest resident is dangerous when viewed from up close!_ ”

The view abruptly returned to the anchors sitting behind their desk and still smiling despite the horror show they had just played for all of New York City.  Disgusted, Richard turned the television off and sunk onto the couch.

Couldn’t they see he wanted to get away?  Couldn’t they see they were hurting him?  It was impossible for anyone—scientists, even, who ought to have known better!—to realize the man was sentient and terrified.  He wondered if it was too late to go to the police and admit his lie, to tell them that the fascinating addition to the tanks in Long Island had saved his life.  He wondered whether it would matter at all, whether he could convince them to let the man go back to wherever he’d come from.  He’d found his phone and was ready to dial when he realized that the man was more than likely beyond his aid. 

Desperately, Richard tried to think of something he _could_ do.  The police wouldn’t be of any help, but perhaps the university, the department head or the Chancellor at the very top, whatever association for preservation of marine life operated Stateside.  There had to be someone he could contact.

His ringtone trilled in the kitchen and Richard ran for it.

“ _It was him, wasn’t it_?”  Graham sounded as rattled as Richard felt.

“Yes.  God, Graham, yes.  Did you see—?”

“ _I saw.  What are you going to do about it_?”

“I don’t know.”  Richard groaned as if he’d been dealt a blow.  “I’ve got to do something.  They can’t keep him, can they?  He’s not an animal, he’s—”

“Slow down,” Graham said.  “Keep your head.  There’s nothing to be done about it now, or at least nothing you can do.  You can bet there will be a few sour eco-freaks out there already taking up their placards, yeah?  Don’t panic.”

“How can I just let them—?”

“You haven’t got a choice, Rich.  Get to work, and then get yourself to mine after.  I’ll think of something.”

Richard hung up and wondered how he was going to get through the day.  A quiet life apparently wasn’t in his cards.

 

_6:30 p.m._

Richard hadn’t been able to make it through the day.  The office had been abuzz with the morning’s news and it seemed that every time he turned the corner there were more theories about what the thing was and where it had come from, whether he was the last or whether there was an entire city beneath the waves.  The fourth time the word ‘Atlantis’ was mentioned, Richard nearly broke the pen he was clutching.  By eleven in the morning Richard had tired of the words ‘it’ and ‘creature’ and even ‘monster’ and by non he no longer had to feign a resurgence of head pain to excuse himself for the rest of the day.

Apparently Graham had no such trouble toiling on as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.  Richard went straight to his flat only to find it empty, and his impatient texts received only one response all day: _you know im not off until five see you with Italian yes you’re eating_.  The pavement in front of Graham’s building ought to have been worn thin by the time Graham came strolling up, jingling his keys in one hand and carrying a plastic sack laden with steaming containers in the other.

He unlocked the door to the entry without a word and Richard dogged him all the way down the on hall to the kitchen and refused to sit even when offered one of the stools at the center island.  He ignored the request for plates and silverware.

“I don’t know how you expect me to eat,” Richard complained.

Graham ignored him and continued unpacking Styrofoam.  He opened his cabinets to find them empty and pulled the requisite dinnerware from the potwash.  He served up a heaping pile of pasta and shoved it into Richard’s hands.

“I’m not above blackmail,” he said, tucking in himself.  “How’s this: you eat your dinner and I’ve got some good news for you.”

Richard nearly dropped his plate off his lap.  “What do you mean, ‘news’?”

“Eat.”

Richard could never remember the name if the little bistro at the end of Graham’s block, but the elderly man who ran it made the best mushroom gnocchi Richard had ever had.  He didn’t taste it as it slid down his throat and for the first time in his memory he was done significantly before his friend.  He couldn’t calm himself enough to wait and demanded: “Well?”

“Jesus, Rich,” Graham mumbled through a mouthful, “some of us worked today.”  He wiped marinara from the beard growth on his chin and shoved in his last mouthful.

His best bet was begging.  “ _Please_ don’t be ornery now.”

Graham deposited his plate on the marble countertop and took his time wiping his fingers with a paper napkin.  “You remember Ken?”

Richard didn’t, but nodded anyhow.

“Turns out he’s got a friend works at the university.  Just a janitor, mind, but he’s got the keys to the place.  Goes in at night after the staff have gone for the day.  He takes out the trash, scrubs the floors, eleven p.m. to four a.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.”  Graham leaned forward to stare Richard down.  “You buying what I’m selling?”

 Never one to break the rules—it only brought trouble down on your head—the first thing Richard felt was bitter disappointment.  He wasn’t sure what solution he’d been expecting Graham to produce, but breaking into a locked down facility undoubtedly rigged with an extremely expensive surveillance system wasn’t it.  “Are you mad?” he asked.

Graham grinned.

“Please don’t say it,” Richard groaned.  After a moment he rolled his head to the side and gave his most plaintive look.  “That’s it?  That’s your plan?  Trespass on government property?  What do we do then?”

“’We’ who?  I hadn’t got that far yet.”

“ _Obviously_.”  Richard’s hope faded.

“Listen, Rich, I know what you’re thinking, I know what you want to do.  Is this a good idea?  I’ve got that you feel responsible somehow—you shouldn’t, but damned if I’ll ever convince you of that so shut your mouth—but I wonder if you’ve thought about this.”

“Is there something to think about?”

“You don’t know anything about this…thing.  You were down there for ten minutes at most, what do you really know? It could be dangerous.”

“Please stop calling him ‘it’,” Richard sighed.  “I’ve had quite enough of that today.   You call Bella ‘she’ and she can’t even talk.”

At the sound of her name, the basset hound lifted her chin from her paws.  When it was clear no summons as forthcoming she dropped back into sleep.

“He, then. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“If he were going to hurt me, he would have.”  Dryly, he added: “I was much closer than anyone else has been: no claws, no nasty teeth that I saw.”

“He broke one of those scientists’ arms today, Rich.  Fractured in two places.  ‘Nother one’s laid up with cracked ribs.”

“And you wouldn’t fight if you were being taken hostage?”

Graham sighed and leaned on his elbows.

“Listen to me.  They’ve got experts down there dealing with it.  Him.  Just like they do with other animals.  Monkeys think and feel, and dolphins too, but I don’t see you running off to join PETA or one of those other madcap organizations trying to liberate all the chimps in the zoos.  The only difference is this looks vaguely human.”

Richard would’ve argued the use of the word “vaguely,” but Graham held up a hand to forestall him.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m saying you might want to wait until you’ve got more information from folk who know how to get it before you decide to do something….”

“Stupid?”

“Drastic.”  Graham clapped a hand over his shoulder.  “I’m not saying you’re wrong, you know.  I’m saying you might want to think about this.”

“Says the man who suggested I sneak into a university’s research facility in the middle of the night.”

“To see for yourself.”

Richard sighed.  “Of course.   Not like I could get him out myself even if I wanted to.”

“Good. Glad we’re on the same page.”  Graham cleared his throat.  So should I let Ken know you’re set on going in one night?  Can’t promise Jimmy’ll be keen on the idea, but if I understand right he owes Ken one.”

“I shouldn’t get anyone into trouble.”  Richard knew that if he took advantage of Graham’s numerous connections someone might lose his job, but the itch to find out for himself where they’d taken the man from the river was too strong to resist.

“Debt or not, if the risk’s too large, Jimmy knows how to say “piss of” more ways than any man I know.  No worries on that front.”  Graham grinned.

“Now _I’ll_ owe you.”

“Anything for you, Rich, you know that.  Now fuck off home and get some sleep.  You still look half-drowned.”

_8:12 p.m._

Richard made a habit never to work in bed.  He’d discovered at a young age that reading through scripts and backstory and doing research into roles while he was tucked beneath his duvet only led to sleepless nights and an unpleasant hurricane of ideas that made it impossible to pin down a character.  With a mind already well-occupied by his recent foray into the world of the supernatural, he knew he ought to get straight to sleep instead of pulling out his laptop and setting it across his knees.

Every local news source and tabloids from across the country had the man splashed across the front page.  Some of the more lurid descriptions included _Monster from the Deep!?_ and _Where Did It Come From?  Are there more?_   The centerfold stories of these rags were plastered with eyewitness accounts of other sightings, ranging from Florida to Greenland and pictures of mysterious remnants of what the authors claimed to be undersea empires.  Before his own encounter, Richard would have derided these people as delusional loons who had far too much time on their hands.  Now, though, he could only wonder if they really had seen what appeared to be living, breathing merpeople?

The New York Times and The Guardian both boasted full-page spreads that continued on page three and several photos, some taken from the grainy footage the news had aired and some at the temporary facility at the university.  The latter featured two well-dressed, elderly gentlemen.  One had a stern face and stiff demeanor; he was identified as Christopher Lee, Ph.D., chairman of the Marine Biology department at Boston University and board member of the National Aquarium in Baltimore.  The grandfatherly man at his side was Ian McKellan, Ph.D, adjunct professor of Marine Biology and representative of the American Psychological Association’s Ethics board for the project.   A quick search revealed just how immense a project this was: both men boasted superlative records and reputations and had been sent for immediately—and at great expense—to oversee the research project.  A small array of Ph.D. candidates stood behind them, ranging in age from young prodigies to a gentleman almost as old as the heads.

Perhaps Richard was wrong to worry.  To have such eminent scientists at the helm surely meant that all the appropriate standards would be upheld and that undoubtedly.  Despite the elaborate explanations of why this new discovery would be a tricky scientific and ethical first, Richard couldn’t help but recall the panic on the man’s face as he’d tried to escape before the rescue workers caught sight of him.  The despairing look on his face and the violence of his struggles as he’d been hefted from the water by clumsy workmen still haunted him.

It was a look he’d seen in passing on television: a young criminal convicted for the first time and being led out of the courtroom for decades in the state penitentiary, some horrible amalgamation of fear and uncertainty drowned in despair.  Richard’s instinctual reaction was always to look away.  He couldn’t bear to see someone else in such agony.

One small magazine Richard had never heard of had a photo that none of the others had included.  It was a close-up of the man curled in on himself in a tank hardly large enough to hold his impressive length.  It was dark enough that his face was shadowed, but not so dark that the unhappy set of his jaw and the stark lines of the muscle in his shoulders escaped Richard’s notice.

Sentient or not, it was obvious the captive knew the meaning of misery.

It vexed him to have to wait for a call.


	3. 5 November

_3:21 p.m._

“ _Tonight?_ ”

The pen Richard had been flicking between his fingers flew across the room.  “It’s been nearly a week, Graham!  Where’ve you been?”

“ _Finding you an in, you ungrateful bastard.  Jimmy’s in if you are.  Ten-thirty tonight if you can meet him at Post and Pioneer.  He’s got your number and your description, he’ll call when he sees you._ ”

“Of course, of course I’ll be there.”  He’d thought of little else for the better part of a week.  The second day after his capture, interest in the merman’s fate had faded from all but the saltiest of rags in print and online and Richard was starved for information.  “What was the—”

“ _Post and Pioneer on campus._ ”

Richard scribbled the address in his palm then realized he was sweating and reached for a notepad.  “Thank you, Graham.  Thank you. I—”

“ _Shut it, Rich.  You can pay me back with some news._ ”

 

_10:30 p.m._

The atrium had been eerie enough.  Even with Jimmy at his side and keeping up a steady stream of chatter that was too loud for Richard’s liking, the dome of glass overhead seemed filled with empty air that sucked up every whisper of his shoes across the shining tile.  Bones and fossils lined the walls: grisly autopsies preserved for visitors to peruse. 

These long winding hallways were worse.

Jimmy had told him not to be so tense (“Not as if there are Russians ‘round every corner waiting for a clear shot,” had been the exact wording; Richard might have found the man charming had the situation not made him want to tear his hair out).  Paneled pillars delineated a pathway between open doorway after open doorway, each revealing barren desks and locked windows.  There was no evidence of life in this building; he couldn’t even hear Jimmy humming as he polished the endless expanses of floors.  Everything was bathed in the moonlight pouring through arched windows and streaming across the emblazoned river of copper cleaving the marble beneath his feet.  He followed its trail around a bend in the hall and froze as he saw the yellow glow of a lamp emanating from an office at the end of the hallway: a golden barrier between him and the double doors marked with the school’s crest and the cherished words: Department of Marine Biology Fuentes Laboratory.

Heart pounding, Richard slid behind one of the pillars and waited to be found out by some overly-diligent graduate student.  After a few moments of silence Richard inched closer; he heard no sound, no footsteps, and finally he found the courage to peer into the office.  It was vacant.  His relief left him in a sharp exhale and he almost turned around then and went back to his ordinary life where he didn’t have to worry about being hauled into a police station for trespassing.

But the door was deceptively fragile; he could see the shapes of desks through the misted glass.  Even as he laid hand to the handle he expected alarm bells to ring, for security to descend, for the heavy door to rattle as it ground against the lock.

It opened silently into a room almost as large as the atrium.

It was dark.  Each of the well-organized lab stations lay abandoned to empty phials and beakers and gleaming silver instruments in black cases.  In the center of the room there is a tank nearly three times as tall as Richard and filled with rippling crystalline water illuminated only by a single bright lamp secured to a beam far overhead and piercing in one stark beam through the center of the water.  It was just bright enough to show a shadowy figure swimming listlessly around the perimeter of the tank.

Slowly, Richard let the door whisper shut behind him.  His heart pounded in his chest as he slunk around the lab stations and empty stools, his hands trembled at his side, his eyes fixed on the restless movement barely visible to his adjusting eyes.

The movement seemed almost feral as the captive darted from one rounded end of the tank to the other, his every pass visible from every angle to anyone who might wish to watch.  Richard thought of that hefty weight and the damage it had caused, of the warning Graham had given him about the danger inherent in the coming interaction.  The closer he got, the more the light showed, and he hid himself as best he could against one of several scaffolds erected against the side of the tank.  He froze as the movement inside stilled.  Graham’s logic told him to expect a sudden attack, that heavy form slamming against the glass, a crack, a deluge of water, to be trapped alone with—

Nothing happened.  After a moment the figure resumed its journey around the tank, leaving in its wake a sucking trail of water and a few bubbles that drifted toward the surface.  Richard wiped his sweating palms on his trousers.  He stepped up onto the iron steps leading up to the platform at the top. 

His first footfall rent the vacant room and sent the shadow skittering away to the other side of the tank, where it settled as Richard climbed higher and higher until he reached the top of the tank.  The surface rippled with the ghost of the man’s troubled path, sloshing against the lip and sending a few rivulets over the side to drip down glass marred with the oil of many hands.

Swallowing hard, Richard tried not to let dizziness overwhelm him.  From his vantage point at the top the tank seemed awfully deep.  Even with the light overhead he couldn’t see the bottom.  Vomit threatened and he swooned, narrowly avoiding a nasty fall by grabbing at the handrail.  _Inhale, exhale,_ he told himself.  _Slow and steady_.  He did his best not to concentrate on the depths.

“Hey,” he whispered.  Immediately he felt foolish; his voice was barely audible.  He tried again, a little louder, hoping the second enticement would carry through the depths t waiting ears.  To friendly ears.  “Hey.  Come up, won’t you?”

This garnered him no response and he choked on a hysterical giggle.  Glossy photos of children and their beaming parents waving dead fish over a tank of trained dolphins sprung to mind.

“Hey,” he tried again.  This time his plea was loud enough to make him flinch.

There was little left to do but disturb the water.  Graham’s voice urged him not to reach in, to think of what might happen, to imagine that strong grasp taking his wrist and that long form dragging him underneath to drown (and be found, perhaps no more than a pile of bare bones or mangled flesh by the morning crew).  Ricard swallowed the thought and against every screaming instinct, dipped his fingers into the tank.  It was freezing.

“Come on,” he murmured, “come on up, my friend.”  He flicked his fingers a bit.  Pushing up his sleeve, he plunged his arm in up the elbow and stirred up a small whirlpool.  “Here I am.”

A sudden movement in the darkness made him lurch back and he was almost immediately glad of it as the figure darted forward with a speed Richard had never witnessed.  The man did not surface, though, lurking just out of view.  Instead of putting his hand back in the water, Richard knelt to press his spread palm against the glass.  There was a flicker of glancing light but the man didn’t move any closer.  Richard tapped his first finger against the glass.

The figure kept his face turned away, gray-green eyes gleaming as he threw wary looks at Richard as if trying to decide whether he shoulder come closer.  Richard kept as still as he could to coax him out.  “Come on,” he whispered.  His palm was growing numb where it pressed against the icy tank.  “Remember me?”

Whatever he had done had charmed the man closer; Richard waited for him to lift his eyes from beneath the swaying veil of his honey-colored hair.  Finally he caught a gleam of shifting gray-green eyes full of weary curiosity.  That gaze trailed over his face, then the eyes went wide and the soft mouth opened and the man shot to surface and leaned over the lip of the tank to drip what felt like gallons of frigid water over Richard’s prone form.  The man stared down at him, gape-mouthed.

Shakily, Richard got to his feet.  They were face to face and he was very much within the grasp of those long arms. He cleared his throat.  “Um.  Hello.”

To Richard’s surprise, he received a hoarse “Hello” in return.

How did one go about introducing himself to a myth come to life?  Richard felt his face growing hotter and rubbed and he rubbed at his mouth to give himself time.  He ought to have shaved.

  The man didn’t speak, just hovered near the glass and stared.  The disturbed water lapped at his chin.  “How are you?” Richard asked.

“I am good.”

Richard chortled awkwardly.  “I find that hard to believe.  You look terrible.”  He blanched.  “I’m sorry, that was rude.  You look…well, I suppose you do look terrible.  Unhappy.”

“Unhappy?”  The man bit thoughtfully at his bottom lip.  His eyes flicked up in thought and then he nodded.  “Yes, I am unhappy.”

“I’m sorry,” Richard blurted out.  The man looked at him blankly and he rubbed his mouth again as he tried to find the words to articulate himself.  “This is all my fault.  All of—” he gestured at the prison, “—this.  This—your mess.  If I hadn’t fallen, if you hadn’t helped me, you wouldn’t be here.”

The man’s face remained impassive as he slid his hand over the lip of the tank and pulled himself closer to inspect Richard’s face.  Richard was close enough to feel chill breath against his cheek.  It smelled of salt and surf.  Something in Richard’s expression made the man smile and Richard’s stomach dropped as he spotted excessively long and very sharp eyeteeth and the mates abutting them.  The brief grin betrayed six of those fangs in total and to Richard’s mind, they were too close to the blood pulsing in his throat.  The glass squealed as the man leaned closer and Richard glanced down to see if there were claws too.

There were no claws, but Richard was fascinated by the translucent webbing.  It shimmered under even the minutest of light, shifting lines of sage and autumn gold shot through with filaments of gray.  They put Richard in mind of a butterfly’s wing…all except the thinnest membrane between the little and ring finger on his left hand.  That was decimated beyond repair, reduced to two ragged flaps on the insides of each long finger.  The faintest dusting of copper spoke of the blood spilled.

“They hurt you,” Richard breathed, reaching without thinking to touch the delicate little flaps of flesh.

The man let out a little yelp and jerked his hand back to hide in beneath the water, giving Richard a baleful look.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Richard blurted.  He hoped holding up his own hands would be seen as a peaceable gesture; he didn’t want to anger something with teeth like that.  He pointed at the injured hand—fin?—and repeated himself.  “You’re hurt.  I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” 

 “Yes, I’m sorry.  That’s my fault too.”

“Fault?”  The air was pregnant with confusion.

Richard felt only vague disappointment.  Teeth, but no claws, and a parody of conversation.  Perhaps the intelligence in those shifting eyes had been a product of Richard’s imagination after all.  He supposed he could only be thankful that the rest of Graham’s suspicions had been wrong: the thing didn’t seem to be some ravenous beast.

“You don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you?”  Richard sighed.  As he spoke, the blank look leveled at him shifted into a childishness need to please that burrowed into his heart.  This was why he didn’t like ads for the Humane Society.  “Poor fellow.  Look at where they’ve got you locked up.”

“He isn’t stupid you know.”

Richard nearly fell off the platform as he whirled to find a lovely young woman standing near one of the lab stations.  A small smile touched her lips as she leaned her hip against a lab station and crossed her arms beneath her breasts.  She was wearing little more than a pair of slouching sweats and a t-shirt with a slogan so faded it was unreadable.  An over-zealous graduate student indeed.

“Who are you?”  Richard only realized how ridiculous he sounded when she began to laugh.

“I might ask you the same question.”  She didn’t bother to keep her voice low.  “As far as I know, no special passes were issued to media or anyone else, and the tank was cleaned yesterday so I know you’re not here for that.”

“I’m not…I wasn’t…I mean….”  Richard struggled to find words that would prevent his imminent arrest.

The woman only surveys him warmly and waits for him to stop stuttering.

Water ripples as the man hangs his arms over the edge of the tank and reaches one long arm out to reach straining fingers toward her.  “Come,” he said.  The woman pressed her fingertips to her lips and blew him a kiss, which made him laugh and submerge again.  He does a little curl in the water that soaks the back of Richard’s shirt.

“You don’t seem like a reporter, or a trophy hunter, or an animal rights activist.  In fact, you look an awful lot like an accountant.”  The woman unfolded herself and he realized she was barefoot and wearing little more than track pants.  She certainly didn’t look like any scientist Richard had ever seen.  “The question is: who are you?”

The man snorted and the sound seemed to startle him; a moment later he burst out laughing.  The sheer glee in it made Richard smile.  “I’m, ah, I’m…he saved my life.”

“Ah, I _see_.  So you’re the dummy who fell in the river.”  Richard started to protest the way the news had reported the accident, but she interrupted him.  “I think he’s been pining after you, though we haven’t made enough headway with the language barrier to move into complex vocabulary.”

The man protested being left out of the conversation as he had protested the distance the woman kept.  He leaned over the lip of the tank again and said plaintively: “Evie!”

Evie the underdressed graduate student made a series of miniscule gestures with her fingertips that made the man laugh.  Echoing his pleasure, she pushed herself away from the lab statin and skipped up the scaffolding to fold her arms around the man’s shoulders and kiss his temple.  “How are you feeling, Lee?”

The address shocked him.  Had they named him, like a pet?  “Is that his name, or—?”

“In a way.  His name is,” she interrupted herself my making a simple, fluid movement with her right index finger, “but we had to find something to call him besides ‘the subject’.”  She repeated the gesture.  “Looks the lee of the mountains, doesn’t it?  We found him an oceanography textbook and when I asked him about his name he pointed out a lee, so Lee he is.”

“I am here,” protested Lee, and rested his chin on her shoulder.

She stuck her tongue out at him.   “I know, darling, and I’m being rude.”  She spoke with her fingers again and Lee grinned.  Richard felt very much as if he were the subject of conversation when Lee nodded at him and went a bit pink in the face.  Evie just laughed and said: “Definitely pining, even if he can’t say it in words I can understand.”

“I thought he might be deaf,” Richard admitted.  “When he, ah, saved me, he was trying to talk to me. The way he does.”  He waggled his fingers in mimicry of the way the two spoke to each other and blushed when Lee groaned and covered his hands with his own.  The webbing was like silk against his knuckles.  Evie stifled a giggle behind her hand.

“He’s not deaf, though if he were human he would be hearing impaired.”  She took a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of her cotton pants and placed one between her lips.  She exhaled a long plume of smoke into the air and Richard watched as it coiled up toward the high ceiling.  “Don’t tell on me, I’m not supposed to be smoking inside.  Doesn’t matter,” she laughed at herself, “Dr. Lee will smell it tomorrow and harangue me about it.  Won’t get rid of me though.”

“What did you mean about hearing?”  Richard has always been keen on facts and jumped on the opportunity to be schooled in a field he never thought he’d be interested in.

 Evie hummed.  “His range varies significantly from a human’s; he can hear tones beyond the bottom of human range and at lower volume too.  Higher ranges, including our normal range, are almost or completely beyond his physical capabilities.”

“Which means?”  Richard found he quite liked this woman, and the way Lee seemed almost cheerful as he watched her speak.  Those changeable eyes flickered across her mouth and transferred to Richard’s when he spoke, and his mouth moved as if he were memorizing the movements of their lips.  Not stupid, no, not stupid at all.

“It means we sound like we’re whispering right now.  If he’s conversing audibly, the louder and lower the speaker, the easier it is for him to hear.  No wonder he likes you and Dr. Lee, you’ve got to be a hell of a lot easier to hear than I am.  They were running tests—God, maybe two or three days ago?  I can’t remember, I left my notes in my office.  He’s got sensory perception in his skin.  It’s not uncommon in aquatic life; it’s dark underwater and sight isn’t as important.  Being able to feel the movement of water and sometimes even electrical output from other beings is a much surer way to make sure you don’t get eaten when you can’t see a damn thing.”

Suddenly, Lee’s head jerked to the side and then he scowled and prodded Evie’s shoulder.  She leaned in to rub the tips of their noses together.  “See, I just tapped the glass.”  She did it again and Lee rolled his eyes.

“And he hears it?”

Evie makes quotes with her fingers.  “’Hears’ with his skin basically.  It’s why you aren’t supposed to tap on the glass at the aquarium.”

“Ah, well.”  Richard looked back over his shoulder and found Lee watching him carefully.  “I didn’t expect to come to school tonight, but I appreciate the lecture.”  He grinned and Lee returned the gesture, and somehow his teeth didn’t seem as sharp accompanied by crinkled eyes and crooked smile.  “Sorry, I’m being rude.  I don’t mean to talk over his head.”

“He understands simple conversations.  It’s remarkable, really, how quickly he picks up English.  He’s quite clever.  I’m not quite as good at sign language, but he’s doing his best with me.”  She turned to translate and Lee had a good laugh at her expense.  

“Not bad,” he assured.  “Good.”  He looked at Richard and made a sign.  “You good.”

“They only wanted me here because they didn’t want to bring in a linguist.  We’re all selfish, scientists, we want to find out the good stuff ourselves before we let anyone else in on the secrets.  Now they can’t get rid of me since I’m the only one who bothers talking to him.  The rest of them are trying to force feed him English and there are a couple jerks here who won’t speak to him unless his articulates verbally.”

Richard felt terrible; he wondered if that was why Lee was so glad to see Evie.  It must be hell to be in solitary confinement and have people ignore you all day unless you told them what they wanted to hear.

“Is that why everything is so…hushed up?”  Richard asked. 

A jerk at his belt startled him and he glanced down to see that had begun fussing with the tab of his belt.  Richard was about to stop him when Evie put a hand on his arm.

“Let him.  He touches _everything_.  I bet’s he’s got that off you in—oops, there it goes.”  Richard felt the buckle go loose and looked down to see Lee pulling his belt free of the loops.  It wasn’t off long before Lee decided it wasn’t very interesting and threaded it back around his waist to buckled it adroitly.  He then plunged his hand into Richard’s front pocket and pulled out his wallet to rifle through its contents.  “I’d say he was bored—do say it, in fact, all the time, but they haven’t taken any of my suggestions so far.  Look at that.”  She gestured at the tank, empty but for the man confined there.  “Can you imagine sitting alone and staring at a blank wall all night?  And it’s worse when we leave him over the weekends.  We came back after the first Sunday and he’d gotten himself out and most of the way to the second floor when we found him Monday morning—thank God for the early cleaning crews.”

Evie sighed reached out to prevent Lee from spilling change and bills into the water.  She showed him how to fold them and handed them back to Richard while Lee squinted at the credit cards and the photo on his identification.  He quickly tired of the investigation and pulled the mess of coins and bills from Richard’s hands, folding them evenly from largest to smallest and reconstructing the puzzle before depositing it back into Richard’s pocket and reaching into the other to produce his phone.

“Careful with that,” Evie warned, but held Richard back from retrieving it.

“Let me unlock it,” Richard murmured. He levered it out of prying hands and showed him the passcode, which Lee repeated and immediately began brushing through every screen he could find. 

“Do you think he tried to kill himself?” Richard murmured.  The quirk of Lee’s lips and the way the tip of his tongue stuck out from between his teeth warmed his belly.

“Him?  He’s too full of life for that.  I don’t think he realizes just how far he is from the sea.  I know he’s lonely.  I can’t be here all the time; I have classes to teach and projects to grade and he’s not very fond of a lot of graduate students working on him.  I can’t imagine anyone liking being poked and prodded and measured and weighed and stuck with needles and stared at every minute of the day, but at least he lets me get in the tank with him.  At least I talk to him about things besides whether he can see this or hear that and does this or that hurt?”

“How does he—never mind.”  Richard had been about to ask how he used the toilet with everyone watching.  Evie just looked at him and he amended his thought.  “Sleep.”

“He sinks.”  She giggled.  “He wouldn’t sleep for four days after they brought him here and finally he just fell asleep and plop!  Right to the bottom.”

The thought made Richard smile.  “He’s probably got a family or something.  A girlfriend.  Mate.  Whatever it would be called.”

“Maybe.  I haven’t asked yet.  Afraid it would upset him.”

Obviously bored of their conversation, Lee had flipped back and begun to dart about the tank, his tail trailing behind him in a glorious opalescent swirl behind him.  It was one of the loveliest thing Richard had ever seen, reminiscent of a dance.  He arched backward and twirled and leapt and Evie leaned her arms on the lip and splashed at him.  “Show-off,” she chided, but he took no notice.  As the display calmed, she said: “He likes you.  I can tell.”

“Does he?”

“Mm.”

“What if I were able to get you access?”

The question was abrupt.  “What?”

“Access, Mr.—?”

“Richard.  Armitage.”

“I’ll call you Richard.  I’m Evie.  Evangeline, but I know it’s a mouthful.”  She nudged him with her shoulder.  “Well?  How about it?  I think I can wrangle a pass for you if you like.  Ian will be all for it, I promise.  He’s just as worried as I am about the physical and mental effects isolation will have on him.  And besides, the sooner we get what we need from him, the sooner we can get him back where he belongs.”

Richard stared at her.  “I have a job.”

“Of course.  But you could come by whenever you had a moment.  To chat, maybe.  To keep him company.”

Lee wriggled back up to the side to let Evie card her fingers through his hair.

The prospect was a tempting one.  He liked the way Lee looked at him, the way he smiled and joked despite the fact that he couldn’t understand most of what was said.  He liked the playful flick of tail and fingers and the idea that me might be part of something historic, even if it remained off the books.

“Come on, Richard, I can see you want it.  Think of it as a favor to me.  And to Lee.”  She tipped Lee’s chin up and signed him a question that made him park up and hoist himself out of the water.

“I think that’s a ‘yes, please’,” Evie laughed.  “Look at that face.  How can you say no?”

Richard ducked his head to hide his pleased smile.  “I don’t suppose I can.”


	4. 9 November

_5:33 p.m._

Evie—dressed more professionally than she had been in the dark of night—met him in the atrium.  “I’m glad you made it,” she told him, offering him a visitor’s badge to hook to his belt loop.  “I thought you might’ve thought better about swimming in these waters.  We’re all crazy here, you know.”

“I did break in,” he admitted.  He let Evie wrap her arm around his own and guide him down the hall toward the main lab.

“Yes you did.”  Evie laughed.  “Ian’s been dying to meet you.  He thinks you’re the only one with your head in the right place about Lee.”  As if they were coconspirators, she pulled him down and whispered into his ear: “He calls the rest of them drones, but only when we’re alone.  Not so fond of tunnel vision, or of Dr. Lee, who encourages it.”

“Ah.”  Richard wasn’t keen on stepping into any rising bad blood.  “Well—”

“Don’t worry so much, you’ll probably never see Dr. Lee.  He’s a hands-off kind of teacher, you know.  Spends most of his time doing all the requisite paperwork.  Ian you’ll love, he’s crazy.”

“Ah.”

 They ducked into a small office just two doors down from the double doors that led into the main lab. It was a mess: papers strewn everywhere, piles of files teetering haphazardly at the edge of the desk, one lamp left on the chair to augment the fading sunlight that illuminated the entire catastrophe.  A fedora and colorful scarf decorated the desk chair.

“Well, he said he’d be here—”

The sound of footsteps pounding down the corridor filled the office and Evie poked her head out the door.  “Ian!  I was just bringing—”

The elderly gentleman who’d looked so kindly in the newspapers had a face like a thundercloud as he stormed into the office and slammed a manila folder down on the desk; papers fluttered and one fell to the floor.  Richard bent to retrieve it.

“He’s done it!  I told him it was terrible practice, especially at this stage—no test runs to speak of—I can’t believe it!”  The man dropped into his chair and straight onto his hat and began to curse profusely, retrieving them from under his backside and throwing them to the floor. 

“Ian, what’s happened?”

“He’s anesthetized the poor bugger, that’s what.  Poof!  Out like and light who’s to say if he’ll ever wake up?  I can’t believe he’s authorized this, and right under my nose!  All the precautions, all the red tape, and despite the fact that we don’t even know—”

“What’s happened, Ian?”  Evie brushed his arm as she moved to bend over the desk, reaching to take the man’s hand.

“Christopher.  Haven’t I said time and time again not to use any general anesthesia?  Haven’t I said it isn’t a wise idea, considering—who’s this?”

The anger faded almost immediately into irritation as piercing blue eyes rested on Richard where he stood awkwardly holding a mess of paperwork he realized might be sensitive.  Carefully he leaned in to place it back on the desk.  “Ah.”

“Not Mr. Armitage?”

“It is.  Richard, this is Ian, he’s heading up the whole thing.”

“My dear boy, you needn’t worry I’ll bite you.  I swear I’m not always in such a foul mood.  Come here, come here.” 

“He doesn’t bite,” Evie chirped.

Despite their forced cheerfulness, the air was still heavy with tension and Richard could see lines of worry in both their faces.  “Perhaps I should come back another time,” he demurred.  He didn’t want to leave, of course, but neither did he want to set foot into any bad blood that might be rising; he was in enough trouble as it was.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ian said.  “Take a seat, Richard.  Maybe I call you Richard?  Good, then you must dispense with any of that ‘Dr.’ business.  Makes me feel old, and I get quite enough of that from well-meaning young people on the subway platforms.”  He shot a fond look at Evie.

She held her hands up in surrender.  “It was only the once, and I was more worried about ingratiating myself with a visiting expert than the strain of your back from carrying that book bag!”

“No hard feelings, of course.”  They both laughed.

When Ian raked his gaze from head to toe and then turned to meet Evie’s eyes, Richard felt very much as though he were the subject of some silent conversation and he didn’t like it one bit.  He wondered if this was how Lee felt when men and women bent over him and bantered on in unintelligible English.

At last Evie said, “Richard’s the one I spoke to you about.  I told you he’d come.”

“And here he is.”  Ian nodded and sat back in his chair.  “I’m sorry I haven’t got a chair to offer you, but I suspect you’re in a hurry to see your new friend.”

Was Lee a friend?  Richard shrugged, doing his best to disguise his discomfort.  “Does that mean I’m allowed to see Lee?”

“Unfortunately, one of my esteemed colleagues has taken his time this afternoon and I suspect poor Lee will be in no right state to entertain visitors.”

Richard swallowed.  “What did you mean when you said he might not…?”

“Forgive an old man his exaggerations.”  Ian sighed and rested his elbows on the desk, steepling his fingers.  “I doubt that will be the case.”

“But what did you mean?  What are they doing to him?”

“Nothing as bad as all that, Richard, so stop looking so dour.  Just a dispute among colleagues, nothing to concern yourself over.”  The dark look still threatening to burst spoke otherwise. 

“I’m sure Dr. Lee had the best of intentions,” Evie began.  “He only wanted to reduce the trauma from the handling and—”

Ian interrupted her.  “And you know how I feel about that.  We have no reason to think Lee would object; he’s complied with everything we’ve wanted so far and I’m sure he’d have agreed to the scans awake or not if only we’d waited until we could figure out how to explain it to him. I’d have thought you’d agree with me, Evie.  You’re the one so keen on communicating and keeping him an active participant.”

“I do agree with you,” Evie murmured.  “I think we ought to have waited.  But surely there’s not much harm done.”

“Aside from forcing compliance?”  Richard didn’t realize the words had come from his own mouth until both of them turned to stare at him.  He blushed hotly and shoved his hands into his pockets.  “I’m sorry, I only meant, well, that….”

“You’re a man after my own heart, Richard.”  Ian heaved himself to his feet and reached over to clasp Richard on the shoulder.  “And I think that, considering the circumstances, Lee will be none too happy when he wakes when that mess of a cocktail they gave him wears off.  Here, if you’ve got a few hours to your name you can wait and see him when he wakes.  No doubt he’ll welcome your company more than any of ours.”

“Do you think so?”

“He’s been bothering me about you _incessantly_ ,” Evie crowed.  Richard resisted the urge to hide his face in his hands and reigned himself to a perpetual blush whenever he was in her presence; she seemed to have no qualms exposing any of her more embarrassing intuitions.  “I think he’s quite as taken with you as you are with him.  But I bet all the boys say that.”  She bent to peer into his face, a playful smile tilting her lips.  “Or the girls?  Both?”

“Let the poor man be.  Look at him, you’re liable to give him a heart attack at this rate.  Never mind her, she doesn’t mean to pester.”  He winked, though, at Evie.  “Undoubtedly both.”

Richard wanted to sink into the floor.  The only thing that kept him firmly rooted in the place was the promise of seeing Lee alive and well.  Despite their assurances that no harm had come to him, Richard couldn’t erase the anger in Ian’s face when he’d stormed into his office, nor the concerned glances they’d cast at one another whilst trying to keep Richard out of the loop.  Even if Lee were in no true danger from this particular treatment, what else did they have up their sleeves?  He shuddered as he remembered the ancient, splayed corpses displayed in naked glory along the walls of the atrium.

“Well.  Now that you’re improperly introduced, I’ll be happy to offer you what information we have.” Ian picked up the folder he’d come in with and rifled through it briefly before handing it over to Richard.  “You can have a look at what we’ve learned about your friend while I got and have a few words with Dr. Lee.  Feel free to use my chair.  Evangeline here will come for you when it’s time.”

With that Richard is pushed into the chair—it creaks under his weight—and left alone.  Evie waggles her fingers at him before she closes the door behind her.  Even the thick wood cannot hide the murmur of their voices as they leave him.

Thoughts about Lee and what they might be doing to him rattled inside his head.  Each experiment grew in scope and direness until Richard shook them free by force of will.  He didn’t need to worry, he told himself, as he’d been assured there was no cause.  (Little cause, his treacherous mind seeded.)

Left alone, his impatience returned full force.  The desire to sit and read was replaced by the anxiety that had plagued him the whole weekend and the cramped office hardly provided room for his long stride.  Defeated, he dropped into the rickety chair and opened the folder.  To his surprise it contained not some grim governmental report but rather a sheaf of paper typed in some unprofessional looping font.  Evie’s work, he was sure.  Then, thinking on the glint in Ian’s eye and the playful was he’d spoken to the woman, second-guessed himself.  The thought made him smile.

In a series of pages that seem more a secondary school student’s outline than anything else, he learned that Lee was not cold-blooded as they expected and that this indicated he must eat approximately half his body weight daily (in a diet they’d discovered to be mostly vegetarian) and that, given these facts, it’s likely he lived in waters 500 to 1,000 feet deep with a strong current.  There was a graceful, feminine scrawl in the margins to tell him: _That means near the coastline and deeper rivers that feed to the sea!!_   Richard laughed at the notations but appreciated them with every fiber of his being.  He was not and never would be interested in the fine mechanics of how the world worked.  He was happy enough just to marvel at its beauty.

Lee’s strange sign language made sense, apparently.  He was capable of vocalization, but speech underwater was impossible.  He had a secondary palate ( _Like a crocodile!_ Evie had written), which, along with soft membrane in his nose, shuttered his airway and therefore his vocal chords when he was underwater ( _So he doesn’t drown!_ ). Richard resolved to learn more of those complex, lovely motions.  He liked the way Lee’s name felt in his fingers almost as much as he liked the sound of his own on Lee’s lips.  Apparently this inability to breathe underwater was remedied by two small sets of gills at his throat, though Richard hadn’t noticed these before.

The limited hearing was explained in more detail than Evie had offered in the lab.  Lee had rudimentary ear drums and inner ears, which meant he was nearly deaf and that should he ever walk on land ( _fat chance, Prince Charming, I think even if you got a kiss off that flirt I don’t think magic will grow him a pair of legs! :p_ ) he’d have no balance.  ( _Balance would mean less maneuverability in water.  He’d get dizzy and lose his way chasing fish or fleeing from predators_ ).

Richard’s concern returned when he found two full pages of the neurological system with bullet points about response to different pain levels.  The paper crinkled in his hands and he turned the page before he could read on.  He didn’t want to know what manner of pain they’d inflicted or why they’d done it.  Indignation of Lee’s behalf filled him.  If it was apparent to Richard, layperson as he was, and to at least those scientists whose heads weren’t halfway up their own arses, that Lee was perfectly sentient, wasn’t it a given he could feel pain?  The length of those pages and the distinct lack of Evie’s friendly notes therein made him uneasy.  He found he’d had quite enough reading for one day and put the folder back on the desk.

Outside the light had faded; Richard was surprised he’d been able to read so long.  He reached to turn on the lamp and draw the curtains on the view of the empty stretch of pathways across the green in front of the building. Beyond the closed door he heard the sound of voices: not one or two murmurs but the excited chatter of people glad to be done with the long hours of Monday.  A knock sounded and Evie appeared looking significantly more tired than when she left.

“They’re leaving now.  Lee should be awake soon.  We think.  We hope.”

“You hope?”

He received a baleful look.  “So you read it all, did you?” she asked.  She slipped inside and closed the door behind her.  “I don’t suppose you’d forgive me if I say it was in the interest of science?”

“Not particularly.”  Richard looked at her and thought he saw guilt in her expression, which only made him wish he’d kept his mouth shut.  “I only meant—”

“No, you’re right, you know.  I did object.  So did Ian and a handful of others.  Dr. Lee is…intent on finishing the project.  He has some distance, you see.  He’s seen him once and stays away from the hands-on work.  I don’t think he even cared when we learned he was perfectly sentient.”  Evie frowned.  “It should have been monumental news, really.  The best the scientific community’s come across in a good long while.  As good as aliens!  Another sentient species right here on our own planet.  But for Dr. Lee I think it’s another puzzle to pull apart.”

“He’s a person.  Isn’t he?”

Evie offered a wan smile.  “Yes.  But he’s also a subject.  That’s why Ian’s here.  Don’t worry, we haven’t done him any lasting damage.  And at the rate Dr. Lee is pushing us, we’ll have learned everything there is to know in a month and he’ll be on his way home.  It’s the only reason the animal right’s activists aren’t breaking the door down—the promise that the end result of all of this will be releasing him again.”

“I suppose that will have to do, then?” 

Outside a young man laughed and his friends joined in.  Going home, no doubt, to meal and family.  His own belly gave a loud rumble that he ignored.

Evie raised her brow and he ducked his head.  “I suppose I can’t say I stayed in the interest of science, can I?”

She began to laugh, then crossed the office and wrapped her arms around his waist in an unexpected embrace.  For a moment he stiffened, not one to engage in such open affections, but when she pressed her cheek against his shoulder and said: “No, but I’m glad you’re here anyway,” Richard wrapped one arm around her and patted her back.  She stood away.  “I’m sorry, that was rude and you’ve been waiting so patiently.  Did you want to chance seeing him?”

“If it’s all right with you.”

Richard’s heartbeat picked up as she lead him through the sea of researchers that parted to let them pass.  He found the voice to ask something that nagged on him.  “Will there be…other people.  In there, I mean?”

Evie paused with her hand on the door.  “It’s only Ian and I who stay late, most nights.  They’re just glad to get out of here after being locked inside all day.”  Giving him another one of her piercing looks, she added: “I don’t have any objections to leaving you two alone.  I’m sure Ian won’t mind, either.  He’s got a lot on his mind and he’s in no mood to distract Lee.  Besides, I don’t think he could stand telling Lee he was technically responsible for…for what happened today.”

“Is he?”

Evie shrugged and opened the door.  “He feels that way, I think.”

The lab is inhabited now only by a few small lights and a few young people gathering their notes to lock away in the cabinets along the walls.  All the stations are cleaned as if nothing had occurred.  Evie went to usher them out and shot Richard a look over her shoulder as she left.  A few of the young people gave him cursory glances as they filed out.

“I’ll be with Ian when you’re done.  If you’d be so kind, I do want to get out of here by nine tonight.”

“Of course.”  Richard just wanted them to leave as quickly as possible.

The door closed behind the last of them and he watched Evie’s shadowed outline through the glass.  She raised one hand to pressed it against the door, then let it fall and strode off.

There have been changes since Richard was last here.  A hose with a diameter on par with Richard’s arm poured a steady stream of air into the tank, sending ripples of water across the surface and bubbles large and small drifting to the surface. At one edge of the tank there is what can only be called a tent made of twine and colored beach towels, large enough to fit Lee and no more, rippling in the artificial current.  Through water that was murkier than Richard remembered, he could see plastic puzzles—all solved—scattered around the bottom of the tank amid limp seaweed and heaps of sand. 

At the opposite end of the tank, pressed nearly against the wall, Lee’s limp form rested against the bottom.  He looked to be sleeping, but if it was sleep then his face spoke of nightmares.  Richard approached carefully.

He knelt down to press one hand against the glass.

Even though the murky water, he could see the iridescent sheen of Lee’s tail. It seemed to shine less than it had before, faded from gold and the shining green of tropical plants to something that reminded Richard of the wintry ponds in the English countryside where dark moss overgrew the rocks in wet summers.  The fan of his tail and mess of his hair drifted in the current.  Were it not for the rise and fall of his chest, he might have been a drowned soul.  No air escaped his nostrils or his parted lips.

_Gills_ , Richard remembered, and there they were.  Just below the line of his jaw were two pale slits in his flesh, the color of his skin fading into the lightest laurel. They flickered ever-so-slightly and made Richard want to reach out and touch.  He wondered if they were as soft as they looked.

Lee twitched, his eyes fluttered, and a great roil went through his length.  He gave a weak surge of his tail and his mouth opened a little farther as his fingers twitched and reached to grasp emptiness.  He opened bleary eyes, their color eaten up by dilated pupil, and looked dazedly around.  He seemed to remember, for his face contracted and he surged to life with a clumsy roll that sent him spinning across the tank.  It was a stark contrast to the sleek, graceful thing he’d been when Richard had last seen him wheeling through the water and the confusion writ large on his face tugged at Richard’s heart.  He rapped on the glass until Lee shook his head and sought the source of the noise. For moment Richard feared he wasn’t recognized, then Lee shot to the surface and he heard a cry of his name in a voice gone hoarse.

He dashed up one of the scaffolds and was pulled into a wet embrace.  Lee’s hair tickled his throat and without thinking he pulled him halfway out of the water and into his arms.

“You come,” Lee muttered, over and over again, right into his ear.

“Yes, yes.”  Richard patted the tense muscle in his back.  “I said I would, didn’t I?”

Lee drew back and Richard gave into his desires.  He reached out and cupped a hand over the curve of Lee’s neck, feeling a flutter delicate as silk against his palm.  Immediately Lee jerked from his grasp and covered the gills with his hands.  “No,” he said.  “Please.”

“Sorry, I’m sorry.  Don’t go.”  Richard reached out for him, relieved when Lee smiled.

“No.  No sorry.  It is okay.”

“Is it?” Richard wondered.  “You look tired.”

“Unhappy,” Lee said, and swam closer to rest his chin on the edge of the tank.  He spoke with his fingers, then mimed sleeping and shook his head in obvious distress.  Richard could only reach out to stroke his hair like he’d seen Evie do.  It made him smile, even if it was a bit sad, and push into his hand.  “I am no unhappy now.  Richard come.  Yes?”

It warmed him and he touched the slope of Lee’s nose with one fingertip.  “I’ll be here more now.  They said it was okay.”  This was apparently beyond Lee’s understanding, because he shook his head and shrugged.  “I’ll come more.  Come a lot.”

“Come a lot?”  Some of the exhaustion drained from Lee’s face.  “True?”

“Yes, true,” Richard said, and laughed.  “Do you like me so much?”

Lee tilted his head in question.

“You like it when I’m here.  You like me.” Richard thought a moment and then pointed at himself, then at Lee, and clasped his hands together over his heart.  He hoped it was where Lee’s heart was.

Gesture spoke true enough and Lee laughed; it wrung loud in the empty room as he nodded.  “Yes, I am like Richard.  Richard like me?”

Richard could only nod.  He did, he realized, like Lee’s carefree attitude and his playfulness, the cheekiness that appeared even when he was trapped in this place.  Fondly, he thought that perhaps on his own Lee might be a bit of a hell-raiser.  He’d fit in with Graham just fine.  “Of course I do.  Would I come otherwise?  Yes, I mean yes.”

Lee didn’t speak, just beamed up at him.  He knelt so that he too could rest against the tank and see eye-to-eye with the figure in the water.  Beneath the surface the tail still moved clumsily. 

“Why?”  Richard asked at last.  He knew that it wasn’t just Lee’s strangeness that intrigued him and hoped that Lee wasn’t merely fascinated with his legs.

“Why?”

“I mean, why do you like me?”

For a moment he thought Lee didn’t understand, then he smiled and reached out.  A wet finger brushed his nose and then his eyelids briefly, then the hand pressed to his chest where Richard had pressed his own not moments before.  He seemed to think, then brushed at Ricard’s eyes again.  “Richard am kind,” he said.  “I see.” 

Despite the lack of eloquence, it was one of the sweetest things anyone had ever said to Richard.  The soft look in Lee’s own changeable eyes caught him and he turned away to avoid the warmth the steady gaze stirred in his belly.  Something told him that becoming overly attached would only end in his own unhappiness.

When he found it in himself to look back again, he found Lee’s eyes drooping and his body sinking lower in the water.  Though he was loath to leave so soon after such long anticipation, Richard tapped his cheek.  “Hey,” he said.

The sleepy smile leveled at him ensured he had to swallow before he could speak again.  “I think you ought to sleep.  You’ve been through a lot today.  I think.”

Lee grinned and the corners of his eyes crinkled.  Richard had the insane urge to touch his lips to them.  Instead he mimed sleep and pointed to the crudely constructed tent.  Lee laughed softly and nodded, then, taking his lip between his teeth, he lurched up and rubbed his cheek gently against Richard’s own.

There was only time for a fleeting glimpse of Lee’s blush and the consternation on his face before he’s gone with a splash and a flick of his tail and with only a trail of bubbles to mark his swift retreat into the tent.

Somehow, Richard found himself with equal color in his face.  He raised a hand to damp skin still tingling from the touch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this started as an excuse for cute gay interspecies sex.
> 
> ...Sorry about the plot.


	5. 22 November

_6:25 p.m._

Takeout containers were never so cumbersome than when one was trying to open a heavy door and not spill the soup, Richard thought.  He bit down harder as his keys threatened to slip from his mouth. (And he would have tucked them away in his pocket, but he’d been kept late at an audition and Evie had phoned to complain that she was starving and ask about their dinner and he hadn’t had a chance to see Lee in nearly three days and so he would forgive himself his own impatience).  He thrust his toe between the door and kicked it open just long enough to slip through and let his keys drop into his free palm.  “I hope you’re all—”

The sight of a tall, unfamiliar man greeted him.

“—hungry.”  Under his stern gaze, Richard felt like an errant schoolboy caught chewing gum and eased the heap of Styrofoam containers down onto the nearest available surface.

“I don’t believe we’ve met.”  The man stood tall and eerily still, both hands clasped behind his back as he raked he took in the interloper; whatever he thought of Richard’s unkempt appearance didn’t show in his face but Richard was almost positive he wasn’t making a good first impression.  The stark likes of his face—hardly visible in the semi-darkness; the overhead light was off for the first time since Richard had begun his visits—seemed almost familiar.

A beat of silence passed and Richard remembered his manners.

“Yes, sorry, I’m—”

“I know who you are and why you’re here.”  The man did not move and neither did Richard.  It felt too much like a showdown and not at all like an introduction.  Richard’s stomach plummeted as he wondered whether his privileges were about to be revoked.  “Considering that I was the man to approve your contact with the subject I’m well aware of your background—or lack thereof, in this case.  Though you interest does pique my own.”

Caught off-guard and hating every moment of it, Richard played the only hand he had.  “Were you told I was the poor bastard he fished out of the river?”

“It’s come to my attention.  Given the circumstances, I assumed your contact would be minimal and your visits to taper when you were assured by the care our facilities offer and presented your own appreciation.”

Despite the fact that there was no malice in the man’s tone, the casual disinterest felt like even more of a threat.  The unnamable tension frizzling in the air made Richard want to flee.  “I wasn’t aware the invitation was limited.”

“It wasn’t.”

The man turned his back to Richard to stare into the tank.  At that moment Richard realized it was empty and his breath caught in his throat.  Had they let Lee go already?  Surely Evie would have told him well in advance if that were the case.  He couldn’t bear to think on whatever else might have brought this man down to the lab.  Suddenly his stern set of his shoulders unearthed a memory.  “You’re Dr. Lee, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

The way he beckoned Richard closer was reminiscent of a bond villain: one deliberate gesture that was not to be refused.  Closer now, Richard realized that the tank wasn’t empty: Lee was hiding in his tent, only the last few feet of tail draped outside the door.  It flicked irritably.

“He’s not fond of me,” Dr. Lee said suddenly.  He didn’t move to touch the glass or to urge Lee to come out.

“Evie said you aren’t interested in him.”

“Ms. Lilly is incorrect in that regard.  The subject does seem significantly more cooperative with the two of you.  One could almost say you’d made friends.”

Richard neglected to answer the implicit question; he thought whichever way he answered would be to step into a trap.  The scientist apparently needed no confirmation and for the first time turned his head to look Richard in the face.  His eyes seemed to look straight through Richard’s noncommittal façade.  “You, perhaps like my staff and my esteemed colleague Dr. McKellan, are overly sentimental.  Let me warn you that sentimentality has no place in science.  Becoming overly attached to a subject can lead conclusions astray.”

“I’m not a scientist or a researcher,” Richard demurred.

“But you are a part of a scientific venture,” Dr. Lee said abruptly, “one cog in a larger machine, and therefore equally responsible.”

“Have you come to warn me off?”

“I’ve come to give you the same instruction I’ve given every member of my staff, though some decline to follow my advice.  If you are wise, Mr. Armitage, you will not dismiss my advice out of hand.  You, after all, stand to lose just as much as Ms. Lilly when the subject is released back into the wild.”

It was a fact Richard had steadfastly refused to think upon even in the dead of night.  He wanted to curtail the conversation before it could touch on any of his secret fears, but if Dr. Lee noticed his discomfort his intent appeared to be to aggravate it. 

“Do you think there is a feasible relationship between the two of beyond these walls?” he asked. 

Richard didn’t.  They lived in two different worlds, and Lee would doubtless draw attention should he come to the surface again—would he come to the surface again after this capture?  Of course Richard had hoped against hope that whatever was blooming between them could coax Lee into meeting with him again outside this lab, but faced with Dr. Lee’s obvious skepticism (or realism) Richard was no longer sure.

He wanted to reach out and tap the glass, to lure Lee out, to soothe his obvious agitation, but he couldn’t do that with Dr. Lee there.

“I suggest you rid yourself of unfortunate emotional attachments before you’re forced to do so.”  Dr. Lee gave him a curt nod.  “Please remember what I’ve said.  I’ve no interest in creating a mess.”

Richard’s guts churned, though the man had been polite if chilly.  Nothing he had said was untrue.  Nevertheless, as the door closed on Dr. Lee’s retreat the air retained a chill. Not even the fragrant dinner waiting for him could melt the stone lodged in his belly.

Slowly he climbed the scaffold and settled onto his perch built specially for him by two of the handier graduate students.  It looked flimsy, suspended over the great depths of the water, and it had taken Evie and Lee’s combined pleas to get him onto it in the first place.  His heart had raced the first time he’d set foot on it and it had creaked ominously, but Evie had assured him it would hold his weight.  It had taken even sweeter pleas from Lee’s hands around his ankles and slipping up his calf beneath his trousers to get him to discard his shoes and socks and dangle his feet in the frigid water.  The beaming smile this garnered him had been more than enough to make up for his terrified visions of slipping beneath the surface.  Tonight, no matter how he kicked and splashed, he could not coax Lee out from his hiding place.  After a few moments of this useless teasing, Richard sighed and went to retrieve his dinner.

He laid out the picnic on the platform next to him and opened up the fragrant dolmades, the hummus redolent of garlic, and the chicken zymarika (ordered on Evie’s strong recommendation from a hidden treasure she’d discovered on an ill-fated date several years ago).  He’d hoped to share his haul with Lee, who’d been enamored of Richard’s meals since the first time he’d appeared—late and haggard from a long day—with a greasy bag of fish and chips in one hand.

Lee had been curious of the scent from the moment Richard had settled at the edge of the tank and unfolded the newspaper to display his greasy supper.  Ever fond of the curiosity that comprised a large part of Lee’s personality, Richard had held out one of the chips and watched surprise chased away by confusion and the replaced by pure enjoyment.  The second chip Lee hadn’t taken from him, but allowed it to be placed in his mouth.  The movement of damp lips against his fingertips might have been deliberate, and before he knew it Richard was letting Lee lick the grease and salt from his fingers after every mouthful.  He’d even forgotten Evie’s watchful presence until she began teasing him about interrupting a date.  The memory still rankled, but only because it was embarrassingly close to the truth.  Lee’s determination to get every last bit of the new taste had left Richard’s skin tingling and his groin aching in stark counterpoint to Lee’s focus on the food.

It had become a ritual in the past few weeks to bring his meals here and share.  He wasn’t an adventurous eater, but Lee’s voracious appetite for new things had driven him into the depths of foodie website to find the best food New York had to offer on the go: hamburgers, curries, spaghetti Bolognese, and pad-thai, apples. Flank steak with grilled asparagus, gumbo, tiny morsels of a variety of cheeses with accompanying jams and fluffy French bread. And on a few rare occasions and with Evie’s cooperative silence, even wine.  All of it Lee could eat in surprising amounts; Richard had taken to bringing far in excess of what he himself could consume in one sitting.  (“He’s almost always eating,” Evie had explained when Richard had evinced surprise at the amount Lee could put down.  “It’s to keep his core temperature up.  He eats—oh, God, it must be almost fifty pounds a day.  I suspect if he had more access to meat of any kind of higher-concentrate carbohydrate he wouldn’t have to eat so much.”)

Whatever he brought, Lee had taken it all from his fingers with increasing attention to the giver and not less interest in the gifts.  The tacit acceptance of what Richard had come to think of as offerings such as the ancients proffered their gods were now taken as such and with due respect for the feelings the meals embodied.

Evie had let them play their game with little comment; her price for her silence was to be allowed to partake in Richard’s new culinary adventures. 

Tonight, however, it appeared Richard would be dining alone.  He pushed back his disappointment: the only container left unopened was a gift he’d been eager to give: sweet honeyed baklava he was sure would be almost as well-loved as the asparagus had been.

In one last plea to urge Lee to come to the surface, he flung one of the dolmades as hard as he could and watch it plunge into the water.  It spiraled slowly downward in graceful curls that reminded Richard of the lackadaisical way Lee swam when he was tired. It settled on the bottom of the tank just a meter from the opening of the tent.

The bait worked.  Slowly one long arm emerged, followed by the rest of him.  Richard smiled as Lee plucked the food between his fingers and turned it slowly, then looked up and made a beeline for the surface.  He held up his prize and came closer with a small smile.  Richard took it from him and popped it into his mouth just to make him laugh.  He loved the delighted little chuckle his more playful antics could elicit.

“Sorry,” Lee said.  He folded his arms on the edge of the platform to rest his chin there.  His nose wrinkled. “I don’t like him.”

“Me neither,” Richard admitted.  He held up another dolma and Lee’s sharp teeth bit it cleanly.  He looked thoughtful, then opened his mouth for the second half.  “But he’s gone now.”

“Good.”

“I brought you presents,” Richard offered.  Lee laughed and hauled more of his weight onto the platform to investigate supper with fingers and eyes.  Taste he waited to Richard to bestow.

Tonight the meal was comfortably quiet, a peaceable affair interrupted only by Lee’s sounds of pleasure as he savored the tender chicken and bits of roasted pear and Cipollini onion from Richard’s fingers. “Thank you,” he said at the end, as he always did.  There wasn’t a sign that meant “you’re welcome”, so Richard just smiled and nodded.

“I brought you something else,” he said.  He opened the baklava and was gratified to see Lee perk up immediately.  He leaned over to inhale deeply and laughed.

“That is a good surprise,” he said.  The long drawl of his vowels wrapped comfortably around Richard.  “What is it?”

Richard explained, plucky the fluffy pastry apart to reveal the nuts and glaze.  It smelled amazing, still steaming slightly despite the wait.  His mouth watered, and so did Lee’s, but the man waited patiently while Richard pulled a crumbling piece free and held it to his mouth.  He opened, and Richard could look away from his lips as they parted to suck Richard’s fingers in.  Heat spiked in the pit of his stomach and spread slowly out through his limbs and into his face as he felt the scrape of sharp teeth, the play of an agile tongue along the whorls of his fingerprints. Lee’s mouth was warm, not like his cool skin, and Richard pressed down on his tongue as he tried to withdraw.

He found his wrist captured in a strong grip and his mouth fell open as he felt Lee’s cheeks hollow, his tongue slipping between his fingers, along the bend of his joints.  He struggled to control his breathing as Lee stared up at him; at least his eyes had not lost their brilliant color in this dreary place.  Without thinking, he thrust his fingers deeper and was rewarded with a moan and the flutter of long lashes as Lee closed his eyes.  Slowly he let his fingers slip free, pressing the wet pads to the cupid’s bow and then cupping his chin to run his thumb against the swell of the lower lip.

 _What are you doing_? he asked himself.  He cupped Lee’s cheek.

The baklava lay abandoned as Lee slowly pulled himself out of the water.  The lean muscle cording his arms and shoulders bunched as he held himself suspended over Richard, their faces only inches apart.  Richard ached to move forward and bestow the kiss so obviously expected, but was surprised when Lee only bent down and gently brushed the tips of their noses together.  A brief nuzzle, and then retreat.  Their eyes met, and whatever Lee saw beyond his bafflement made him lean forward again and repeat the gesture with more surety.

Richard’s fingers ached to reach out and touch the smooth skin, feel the flex of muscle and bone beneath his palms, to trail across the gleaming scales further down, but he was frozen under the unexpected treatment.  It was slow, languid, the way Lee nuzzled him and pressed their cheeks together.  It reminded Richard of an affectionate cat as Lee leaned lower to brush parted lips over his ear and his throat, then hi nose and cheek.  He breathed out a heavy sigh as Lee moved efficiently to the other side to resume the caresses.

Lee drew back.  “Okay?” he asked.

It was as if the breath had been knocked from Richard’s lungs.  He nodded.  “Yeah,” he said hoarsely.  “It’s okay.  More than okay.”

“Good.”

This time Richard captured his lips as he swept in again.  He swallowed the surprised noise Lee let out and used the opportunity to slip his tongue in.  He breathes in the sighs, the moans, as he tipped Lee’s head to get a better angle.  But this is above water, and they both must breathe eventually.

Lee rested his forehead against Richard’s, his body trembling as he tried to hold hid weight up. His arms gave out and he slid back into the water to rest his chin on Richard’s knee.  “Why do you do that?” he asked.

“Kiss you?”  Richard was surprised.  Perhaps he’d misread the gesture, perhaps it was something between brothers or kin: a sign of affection or thanks.  He blushed hotly and turned his face away, but a hand pressed against his cheek drew him back.

“Kiss?”

“Yeah,” Richard breathed.  Lee caressed his cheekbone with his thumb.  “A kiss.”  He bent forward to offer another brief peck.

“A kiss,” Lee said, thinking.  He pulled Richard down again and rubbed their noses together.  “Now I kiss you.”

“Is that what that was then?”  Relief flooded him.  He imitated the gesture and Lee leaned into the touch, moving in again to rub at the bared line of his throat.  Richard couldn’t help the joyous laugh that bubbled out of him: Lee had been _snogging him_ —and quite enthusiastically if the pleased sounds he emitted were anything to go by.

“Am I interrupting something?”

Richard jolted back and found Ian standing at one of the lab stations.  “No, I—” Richard stammered.  “I—we—”

“Don’t let me stop you, dear boy.  It’s lovely you two are so…close.” 

Even in the gloom, Richard was sure his face was flaming.  His only condolence was that Lee was blushing just as hard and determinedly avoiding Ian’s questioning gaze.  Unfortunately there was nowhere to hide, and Ian was a cheeky old bastard.  How much did he know about Lee’s social habits?  Richard could have sworn there wasn’t a contingent of social scientists attached to the project.

Slowly, like a predator sensing blood in the water, Ian approached.  His eyes shone.  “I thought you two had already made fast friends?”

“We are friends,” Lee said immediately.

“Are you?”  Ian stepped up to stand beside Richard and Lee scowled at him, giving him a retaliatory splash.  “Now, now!  You two ought to respect an old man’s wisdom.”

Richard turned his face away.  “You don’t think it’s…strange?”

“Strange?  Whyever would you say that?”

The deliberate misunderstanding made Richard irritable.  “You know what I’m talking about.  It’s…we’re two different….”

“Cross-cultural barriers have never much impeded love,” Ian intoned.

“Have cross-species complications?” Richard asked dryly.

“I seem to recall some shenanigans with dolphins in the sixties—”

“Ian!”

Laughter filled the cavernous room.  “I’m only teasing you, Richard.  I suggest you not think on it too closely.”

“Your Dr. Lee advised otherwise.”

The declaration put a quick end to Ian’s mirth.  His eyes narrowed.  “And when did you meet Dr. Lee.”

Richard sighed and ruffled Lee’s hair before slipping off the platform.  He toed into his shoes and tucked his socks into his pockets, ignoring Lee’s protests at such an early departure.  The clock told him it was nearly ten, though, and the fact remained that the spell they’d woven around him had been broken.  “He was waiting for me when I arrived.  He seemed to think I’ve grown too attached.  That I visit too often.  Whatever it was, he wasn’t quite clear with me.”  He shuddered.  “I felt like he was warning me off.”

After a moment’s consideration, Ian clapped him on the shoulder.  “I wouldn’t put too much thought into that, either.  Christopher has that effect on people.  As you know, he and I don’t exactly see eye to eye.  You’ve nothing to fear.”  


Richard disagreed, though it wasn’t reprisal from the staff he feared.  With as cheerful a smile he could muster he bid Lee farewell and tried not to blush too hotly when he was pulled into a messy, insistent kiss and Ian began laughing again.

He retreated to the soft sound of voices and couldn’t help but think that they were discussing something besides himself.


	6. 2 December

_1:17 p.m._

_so so so you got to second base then???_

Richard really shouldn’t have checked his texts.  He chokes on his sandwich and reached for his water as Graham stared at him across the table.  “A friend with a bad taste in jokes,” he said, blushing all the while.  Graham didn’t respond, but took another large mouthful to avoid pointing out that Richard was a shit liar.

_What does that even mean, anyway?_

_it means you don’t know how to lie and Lee is a blabbermouth la la la_

Evie wasn’t a person who knew how to turn her dials down at all.  Her enthusiasm went from amusing to humiliating in the blink of an eye.

_ian said you walked in on you two canoodling_

_Who says “canoodling”?_

“Rude to text when I’m right here keeping your sorry ass company on my shortest lunch break this decade,” Graham informed him around a mouthful of roast beef and horseradish.

“Sorry.  It’s—”

“Your boyfriend?”

Exasperated and wondering whether everyone but him had lost their minds, Richard said: “He’s not my—Lee doesn’t know how to use a phone.  Well, he does.  He could, I mean, but it’s not like he can read or write.”

“No doubt he’d be—what is it, sexting?—you every minute of the day if he could.  God, which hole d’you even put it, Rich?  D’you freeze your bollocks of when you fu—”

“Sh—shut it, Graham damn you!”

The conversation had drawn some attention from two elderly ladies at another table who paused at crunching their salads to make their disapproval of such talk known.  Richard hopes he looked sorry enough, for Graham didn’t look sorry at all.

“Must you?”

“Conquests are always best chewed over with beer.”

Richard sighed.  “Then at least wait until _I’m_ drinking as well.”

“No use to me, you’ll end up stumbling and nothing good ever comes out.”

His phone buzzed again in his pocket and against his better judgement Richard retrieved it.

_so details please Lee doesn’t have the words and he’s blushed like a fiend when I brought out the porn_

Richard groaned again.

_the pictures were a little off with the cocks obviously but he got the picture_

He turned his phone off.

How did she know about the cocks anyway?

“You’re blushing again.  You gonna answer me?  Which hole—?”

“Graham!”

The next time someone laughed at him he was going to lock himself in his closet.

_10:15 p.m._

“Oh, God.”

Lee was a force as inexorable as the tide against the shore, and Lee wore him down as the water wore away the stone.  Every fleeting glance of fingertips, every sigh and moan, every flicker of hot tongue between his lips stripped away another conscious objection to this and left Richard a trembling mess beneath the ministrations he received so eagerly.

It was all he could do to grip tight to the edge of his platform as he slid lower and lower and Lee bent over him to press him down onto his back.  This must have been what drowning felt like: Richard could hardly breathe though not for want of trying.  It was just that the air seemed to go as quickly as it came, chased away by the scent of Lee’s breath and the touch of his hands.

With a massive expenditure of will, Richard unhooked his fingers from where they clutched at the platform and curled them—still numb from his death grip—around Lee’s neck to reign him in.  Their lips brushed and he groaned in protest and struggled to deepen the kiss even as Lee ducked his head down to nuzzle his collarbone and licked all the way up to his chin.  “Kiss me,” Richard panted, fisting one hand in Lee’s hair and ducking his head to try and force the issue, “kiss me.”

“I kiss you now,” Lee murmured, licking up the other side and writhing higher up Richard’s body until the weight of him drove the last of Richard’s breath from his body and he finally, finally got what he wanted.

He devoured Lee’s mouth, clutching him tight and drawing him down.  He slid one hand down the long curve of his back, eager to cup the firm curve of backside only to feel Lee go stiff on top of him as his fingers encountered the silken scale where man melted into myth.  Immediately he paused; he could see the pulse thundering beneath the closed gills, the way the rush of blood brought the color of them up until they pulsed brilliantly green against the paleness of damp skin.

“Did I—?”  He didn’t think he’d hurt Lee, but his face was the picture of a man holding in a groan.  It was soon freed.

Richard’s fingers scraped over scales: they were much softer than he’d imagined they would be, ruffling and smoothing beneath his fingers in a way he’d imagined only feathers would.  When he stroked against the grain Lee gave a full bodied shudder and a garbled groan rent the air.  Reaching out tentatively, Richard felt a flutter of what felt like delicate skin, and slowly pushed himself up to rest his chin against that tense shoulder and look down.

All the shimmering color had returned with the blood heating Lee’s cheeks: was it possible for such color to exist in nature?  The play of light in golden arcs along the curve of scales fading from deepest forest to palest spring meadow reminded Richard of some Impressionist’s painting of happiness. He trailed questing fingertips across the changing shimmers and Lee pressed his face into his shoulder and groaned loudly again.  The dance of his fingers brought up a slight, quivering fin that snapped back in tight when Richard runs a finger down it.  He laid both palms flat against the curve of the long tail and dragged them around the tender line where sharp hip bones melted into something completely different.  He exhaled deeply.  “You’re beautiful.”

If Lee understood, he gave no sign.  The impressive length of him undulated into Richard’s questing hands, urging him on and grinding against the urgent press in Richard’s own trousers.  He wondered what it would feel like to rub against that odd, velvety tail.  “Beautiful,” he said again, and rubbed his new beard growth against Lee’s cheek to urge him to look up.

His eyes were nearly all green, the pupils contracted to sharp points; his lashes fluttered quick as a rabbit’s heartbeat until he closed his eyes again.  “Can you even see me?” Richard whispered, then spoke into his own kind of kiss: “How do you see me?” 

Lee gulped and shook his head.  Fingernails raked down his chest, catching on his buttons.  “I have no clothes,” he said finally.  “You have no clothes.”

It took a moment for Richard to understand what Lee wanted.  He swallowed hard.  _What am I doing_? he thought.  _Can I stop this?  Do I want to?_  His voice came out low and rumbling.  “Take them off, then.”

Lee didn’t understand.  Richard took one of his hands and pressed it to his chest, showing his clever fingers how to undo a button.  With that obvious encouragement, Lee stripped him in record time, shoving at the linen until Richard shook his arms free and leaned back to savor the way Lee brushed his face against his shoulders, his chest, his heaving belly, and closer and closer to where Richard wanted him most.  But Lee stopped when his lips brushed the cool belt buckle and his chin hit the firm arc of his length below.  Richard resisted the urge to push his head down, to rub his thumb along the plump mouth, to let Lee suckle his fingers with generous tongue.

Lee hesitated, looking for the first time incredibly anxious.  He laid one hand over the bulge in Richard’s trousers.

With great effort, Richard croaked: “You don’t…you needn’t—”  He choked on a groan as Lee ground the heel of his hand down and fire raced through him.  His own shudder echoed through the body between his splayed legs.

“This is good?”  Lee looked up expectantly.

The only answer Richard could give was a long moan as Lee pressed down harder.  The zipper ground into his skin, the pain only increasing her fervor, and Richard let his head drop back against the wood and pushed his hips up into the touch.  He groped ineffectually for his own belt, but Lee beat him to the job and in a moment was unceremoniously tugging the trousers down his legs.  Before he could speak they were free of his ankles and sinking slowly to the bottom of the tank.  He didn’t care, nor did he care that he sat naked in a university lab, his erection jutting up red against his belly, his hair mussed and sweat rolling down his spine.  What if Evie was in late again?  What if a security camera was on?

Lee ran one finger from root to tip and Richard closed his eyes.  The world spun around him, his ears filled with the thundering of his own heart and the whisper of water against Lee’s sink as he slunk back out to drape himself over Richard’s prostrate form.  “Come in,” he urged, slipping back down, dragging his open hands down, down, down his thighs, down his legs, to wrap around his ankles.

Then Richard was sliding down into the water, the cold sending panic racing through him.  He gasped, kicked out violently and found nothing beneath his feet, only the dragging weight of the water sucking him down.  He lashed out again, freeing his ankle from Lee’s grasp and clutching with slippery fingers at his platform to keep from going under.  He struggled, his breath robbed from his this time by fear, and Lee’s voice babbling nearly—unintelligible words, a mess of sound roaring in his ears, and strong hands grasping his wrists, his flailing legs—when he gasped for breath water rushed in and this time a kick struck home and he pushed himself out of the water and scrambled back to safety.

Even the platform was too close, much too close; the waves created by his struggle lapped over and threatened to drag him back down into the pressing, consuming depths.  Richard scrambled off, falling painfully onto the scaffold and clutching at the iron rails as though they’d save him.

“Rich?” 

Vaguely he became aware of Lee repeating his name, sliding over the lip of the tank until he dangled precariously close to falling out but close enough that his groping fingers could brush Richard’s wet hair.  He slapped the hand away, remembering their strength and the way they’d pulled him down.  There was a splash, then silence but for his own heavy rasping pants.

A moment later heavy cloth fell over his head.  His trousers slid in a sopping heap into his lap.  Heart hammering, hands shaking, he slid back into them.

“Richard?”  The query was soft; the hand that wrapped around his nape was not, and Richard jerked away.

“No, don’t!  No!”

He pressed his forehead against the chill iron to cool his hot blood, swallowing hard, gulping down air, savoring the solid metal beneath his body and clutched in his hands.  Minutes later, when he had calmed himself enough to stop the trembling in his limbs, embarrassment made itself known in a blush significantly less pleasant than the ones Lee had brought out.  Hesitantly, he turned to look, but even the sight of water dancing through the ripples made him dizzy and he pressed a hand over his eyes and sighed.  “Lee?”

There was silence.  Without turning, the reached back to rap his knuckles against the glass.  “Lee?”

Braving the sight, Richard got unsteadily to his feet and found Lee hiding away in his tent.  His tail curled listlessly out, and Richard tried rapping again.  Was it only now that he noticed how the water seemed to swallow up the noise?  He shuddered.  He tried again.

Lee’s tail disappeared into the tent.

With a sigh, Richard descended on shaking legs and circled around to kneel at the wall where the tent obscured his view.  He knocked again, then tapped with his fingers.  “Come on,” he urged.  “Don’t do that,” he pleaded.

He pressed his forehead against the glass and drummed his fingers.  “Lee,” he hummed, wondering if the vibrations from his voice carried through the glass.

It worked.  Fingers curled beneath the tent and one gray-green eye appeared, looking up at him balefully, then disappeared again. It was heartening, and Richard knocked again.  “Come out, okay?  I’m sorry, it wasn’t your fault.”

Lee slunk out of the tent, and everything about him was dim.  He looked like a kicked puppy, his lovely tail shadowed and faded as it had been when Richard hadn’t been able to come around for days at a time.  Richard pointed up, and moved back to climb the scaffold despite every warning creaming in his veins.  He braved leaning over the edge of tank, stuffing illness down his throat.  “Come here,” he said hoarsely, holding out hand out.

Lee barely surfaced and seemed hesitant to come closer.  He emerged just enough to speak.  “I am sorry.”  He ducked under again and Richard flicked at the surface.  Finally his fingers encountered soft hair and he coaxed Lee up.  “I am sorry,” he said again.

Richard wanted to kiss him just to get that hideous look off his face.  “Don’t be sorry,” he said.  “Please don’t be sorry.  It wasn’t your fault.”

At this proclamation, Lee popped up.  “What does that mean?”

“It means it wasn’t…it wasn’t anything you did.  You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Lee looked indignant.  “I am smart.  I made you unhappy.”

“Afraid,” Richard corrected.  The now-familiar confusion spread across Lee’s face, and Richard realized it was a word they’d never had occasion to work into their growing vocabulary. “It’s…I don’t like deep water.  I—”  He’d never thought of a way to explain fear before.  It was a universal human condition, one even mightiest called his own.  But Lee was looking at him intently, and all he could do was shake his head.  “I don’t like it.  I think of…of drowning.”

Another word lost in the gaps between their lives.  So Richard pressed Lee down into the water and slowly, slowly, slid his fingers over the silken gills beneath his jaw, stilling their fluttering, until Lee struggled away from him, slapping at his hands and resurfacing to give him a baleful stare.  “See?”  Richard said. 

“I understand,” Lee said.  He looked mournful.  Slowly he levered himself out of the water, still faded in mood and color, and pressed his nose against Richard’s.  “I am sorry.”

“Stop saying that,” Richard mumbled.  He took a kiss of his own.  “It was me ruined everything.”

“Ruined?”

“Spoiled.  It’s bad now.”

Lee looked surprised and ducked back down into the water.  “It’s bad now?”

Richard wanted to pinch himself.  “No—I—damn it!”  He pressed a hand over his eyes and groaned.  Frustration welled up; he’d never felt such a gap between them before, like whatever he said was wrong, that in trying to wipe that guilty look off Lee’s face he was only making things worse.  How did he always manage to make such a mess of things?

A stream of water struck his hand.  “What?”

Lee was sunk back into the water again, one brow cocked up, and though Richard couldn’t see it he knew he smiling.  He surface again to blow another stream of water and though this one missed he laughed and slid beneath the water to turn a few delighted summersaults.  “You little!”

Richard ducked down to watch Lee turn tricks beneath the water, darting up to press a hand to Richard’s and then flipping away again. The swirling trails and Richard’s laughter brought color surging back into Lee, pink in his face and gold and emerald in his tail, streams of bubbles a trail marking his path and creating a painting of graceful whorls in the water for Richard to follow.

Finally he settled down and with his calm happiness Richard’s feelings of having mucked everything up settled too.  Though the glass still lay between them, he could almost feel the press of Lee’s hands and forehead, the flutter of his lashes as he cast his glance over Richard’s face.

The door slammed open and Richard jerked back, losing what breath remained in him and nearly losing his foot as well.  Evie was making a mad dash for him, clumsy in unshod feet.

“Richard!” she hissed.  “Get out of here!  You’ve got to get out of here!”  She stopped short, staring gape-mouthed at his half-naked state and the pattern of bubbles Lee had left behind like blazons of guilt and the light shining off in rainbow streaks from his tail as evident as any love bites.  “Did you…were you…?”  She shook it off faster than Richard had thought possible.  “It doesn’t matter.  You’ve got to—”

The sound of a door opening and closing down the hall had her slapping a hand over her mouth to stifle a cry.

Lee flicked back and forth restlessly, surging up to clutch at them both.  “No, lovely,” she whispered, kissing his forehead hard.  “Go away.  Hide.  And us too.”

Footsteps approached with a low murmur of voices for accompaniment.  Evie dragged Richard bodily across the floor, slapping a hand over his mouth when he made to protest.  “Are you deaf?  Quiet!”

With no more explanation than that, Richard found himself shoved into a supply closet with something prodding his back and Evie plastered to his front.  He thanked whatever powers listening that he’d got rid of his hard-on.

“Sh,” she cautioned beneath her breath.

The heavy door to the lab whispered open, and Richard heard a familiar voice.  “—unsure we’d be able to complete the project on time.”

“I put my trust in you, Dr. Lee.  It seems you have the thing well in-hand.”  Neither the voice nor the accent could Richard place.  In the darkness, Evie pressed her forehead against her shoulder; Richard could feel her lips moving against his bare chest.  He could smell her sweat and feel her heart still racing.  “Well?  Where is it?”

“Hiding, no doubt.  He’s developed a strong aversion to me.”

“You made no mention of adverse behavioral issues when we last spoke.  Nor at all.”  The second man did not sound pleased, but Dr. Lee responded just as curtly as he had before.

“I didn’t know it would make such a bearing on your decision.”

The man snorted.  “Well.  Get it out, then.  I’ve come to see my investment.”

“You needn’t fear, there are other buyers should you be displeased with what you see.”

Evie shoved her hand over his mouth again, perhaps anticipating the choked cry of protest that forced its way up Richard’s throat.

“And you would suffer a loss, I suspect.  Ah…”first-come, first-serve”, I believe is the saying.  It isn’t the accepted way of bidding in any venue I’ve ever visited.  But as you wish.  Unveil this…wonder.”

Richard ducked his head and hissed into Evie’s ear: “What’s going on?”  She only hushed him more firmly and shook her head.  Her hair stuck to his swollen mouth and tickled his nose.

There was loud rapping; Richard thought it sounded rude.  Not rude—demanding.  He heard the familiar movement of water, and an angry hiss, then there was a clamor of footsteps and a splash and a struggle in which no participant cried out or swore.  There was a burst of laughter.  “Feisty thing.”

“Ornery,” Dr. Lee corrected.  “But as you can see, the right leverage brings him to heel.”

“So I see.  I’m equipped to handle such delicate situations.  Bring him closer.  Here.” 

There was another round of splashing, and this time Lee did cry out.  Richard went stiff, every hair standing on end, every muscle poised for flight, but Evie’s slight weight bore down on him and the press of her hand prevented any desperate word from leaving his mouth.  His breath came fast and sharp through his nose.

“Be. Still.”  Evie’s lips moved against his ear.

The strange man laughed again, though the sound was cut short and followed very quickly by the sound of a slap.  “ _That_ I do not have the patience for.  Do it again and I’ll—”  Another slap.  “What did I tell you?”

“You’ll find lessons swiftly applied.  We’ve had great success even with language.  He’s facile enough given the right incentive.”

A stone settled in Richard’s belly.  Had he been the incentive?  Had his visits and the resulting swing in Lee’s mood hastened his delivery into the hands of this visitor?  He swallowed hard, the tension coiled in his muscles made him tremble.  Evie was shaking her head endlessly, still pushing him hard against the wall.

“Anything worth having is worth pursuing.”  The clap of hands wrung loudly and startled them both.  “Very well then.  One week and it’s mine.  The arrangements are made.  Should there be any changes in plan you will inform me through the proper channels.”

“Through the same channels we’ve used in the past, yes.   I don’t anticipate any problems.”

“Excellent.  Now get us out of this labyrinth and we’ll drink to it.”

The waited what felt like decades to be sure of their solitude before emerging from cover.  The only way to count the endless moments was the thunder his pulse in his ears, the whisper of Evie’s own haggard breathing against his throat, the droplets of sweat gliding down his face.  Finally he could bear it no longer and Richard shoved Evie aside to stagger out of the oppressive closet.  “What in the name of God was that?” he gasped.

The protection of Lee’s tent lay in a limp and sopping pile on the floor, water spreading slick around it.  Lee himself was flipping agitatedly near the bottom center of the tank, as far from the pitiful light and the danger of open air as he could be.  Even as Richard ran to him, he slammed two fists down against the glass and sunk all the way to the bottom.  Blood spun in a ribbon through the water, and Richard leapt up the stairs of the scaffold three at a time.

Evie ran at his heels.

“Lee?”  Richard splashed urgently at the surface and watched as Lee only spun in distressed loops through his own diluted blood.  “Come on, love.”  He splashed again, and Lee broke the surface moments later and nearly dragged Richard into the water with the force of his embrace.

He shuddered beneath Richard’s hands, but when they parted he showed no sign of fear, only indignation and anger.  Bruises were already rising beneath those luminous eyes and would doubtless be black by morning.  How to hide that, Richard wondered.  He reached out to touch the poor evidence, but Lee ducked away and shook his head.  “No.”

“Are you all right?”

For the first time since their meeting, the sight of those sharp teeth bared sent a shiver down Richard’s spine.  “I will—” Lee made a demonstrative gesture that only chilled Richard more.  It was hard to fault Lee, though; Richard himself wasn’t one for violence, but the sight of the hurts on those fine cheekbones made him want to lash out.

“Bastard,” Evie whispered.  Her fingers clenched hard against the lip of the tank, her knuckles going white.  “I could kill him.”

“What was that?” Richard mumbled. At his side, Evie stiffened.  The air grew heavy and Richard looked over at her.

Her lovely face was flushed, her eyes turned aside.  When she spoke, it was barely more than a whisper.  “I was going to tell you, Richard, I swear.  I was going to tell the both of you.”

“Tell me _what_?”

“I only just found out,” Evie said.  She seemed hesitant to touch either of them.  “Please.  I would have told you if…if I had known.  I knew there was a reason Ian didn’t want….”  She shut up almost immediately, but Richard had already turned on her.  The hot ire in him grew to encompass her, and only moreso when she bit her lip and looked at him pleadingly.  “Please.”

“What’s going on?”

Lee studied her intently, reading clearly as he so often did the truth in her face.  Confusion turned to anger, then anger to hurt in a matter of moments.  “Why?” he pleaded.  “Evie?  You know about… _him_?”

“I thought it would be like…more like…oh, I don’t know!  Not that!”

“You _did know_.”  The more Richard thought on it, the more things began to make sense.  “You knew they weren’t going to release him.  You knew they were going to…what?  Auction him off on the black market?  Are there buyers for…?  Of course there are, damn it.  Stolen art, drugs, whatever they want, there for the taking if they’ve enough money to make it happen?”

“No! Well, I—it isn’t that I…please!  I know there isn’t an explanation for this that’ll be accepta—”

“You are, aren’t you?  Selling him?  To _that_ _man_?”  Richard found it difficult to keep his fists clenched at his sides.  Impotent rage and the knowledge that he’d never so much as scented ill intent ate away at his reason.

Evie lowered her head.  “I didn’t know right away, I swear I didn’t, and neither did Ian.  It’s only recently come to light and Ian’s doing everything he can to stop—”

Richard wished he could cut her words from the air.  “But you knew.  And you didn’t tell either one of us.”

“Perhaps it didn’t seem so bad at first.  Neither of us ever met the man and the proposal was…was made to seem….” 

Lee retreated beneath the surface, his face a mask of grief and—Richard despised it even more--resignation.  But the tank was empty and Lee was alone and there was nowhere for him to hide.  More than ever, Richard longed to plunge in and hold him close, feel those long arms around him and to carry the weight that pulled Lee to rest heavily at the bottom.

“To seem what?”  Richard could hardly give breath to the words.

Evie swallowed.  “Romantic,” she whispered.

Richard could hardly believe his ears.  “Romantic?  _Romantic_?”  He rubbed his mouth in agitation.  He wanted to shake free the memory of her body pressed so close to his own, imagined that her own treachery rested in his lungs from their shared air.  “All this time, you knew Lee and I….”  He blushed.  “You knew.  You encouraged it, you and Ian both, and you thought it would be _romantic_ to sweep him away like some bought bride?  How can you say, how could you think…?”

“I can’t,” Evie cried, grabbing at his wrists.  “I can’t, I don’t!  Not anymore, not at all!  I know I should’ve said something!  I did just now, didn’t I!  I need your help, we both need—!”

“You need my help?”  Richard shoved her away in disgust.  He wanted her to leave, he wanted time with Lee to process this earth-shattering news, to plan, to stroke his fingers across the hurts done to him and kiss them away, to suck all the anger out of him until all that was left was Lee’s general cheery demeanor, to cast out the shadow of fear in his face.

“Lee needs your help, Richard.  And you two will need me.  And Ian.”

“It seems you’ve already done enough.”

Evie grabbed his face and though her eyes were teary her face was dry.  “I didn’t do anything,” she croaked.  “I may have stayed quiet, but none of this was my idea.  Please.  Richard.  We’ll find a way to get him out of this mess, you and me and Ian together.  Trust me.”

“How can I?”  Whatever warmth had kindled between them as she sent filthy texts and secret smirks was gone.

“You have to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear there will be cute interspecies sex.


	7. 3 December

_12:30 p.m._

The only thing that kept Richard from hiding his mobile in his sock drawer was the fear that he would miss something and find out tonight from some smiling reporter on the news that Lee was gone.  Every time it pinged, every time someone rang him, his heart leapt into his throat half in hope and half in fear.  He was beginning to hate the slight weight in his right front pocket.

This time, when he dragged it out, Evie’s name flashed on the screen.  Exhausted from a sleepless night and in no mood to forgive, he nearly deleted the text without reading it.  Concern about Lee made him open it.

_do you have someone you can trust?_

It seemed an odd question to Richard: even more so considering the falling out they’d had the night before.  _Of course_.  The nebulousness of the situation and his relationship with everyone involved made him think that to keep in contact was more important than his own resentfulness.

_good just keep them in mind and keep going on like nothings wrong see you tonight_

Richard was baffled by people who could move along through life unperturbed by worry and doubt.  He felt as though the waitress who’d served him coffee and picked up his half-eaten breakfast had seen his fear written all over his face; he imagined the man sitting across from him on the tube that morning had looked right through him and seen all his secrets laid bare.  He knew it was nothing, that he was just as opaque to others as they were to him, but still he feared.  If he couldn’t hide himself from strangers, how could he hide what he knew from the people who’d been with him in the lab for weeks?

He spent most of the afternoon pacing his flat.  Despite the cool air streaming in his open window, sweat beaded on his upper lip.  His mind raced to find some solution hidden in the grout between the tiles on the floor, in the dusty pages of a book at his bedside that hadn’t been opened in months.  He opened his laptop in search of ideas, but could not find the words to type.  He made himself a pot of coffee and when that too failed to provide sufficient impetus for thought he slammed the mug down onto countertop so hard the ceramic shattered.  Cleaning up the mess dripping down the front of the cabinets and spreading across the floor kept him from screaming.

A knock a nearly two p.m. startled him out of a miserable funk and he blinked hard until the spot he’d been staring at on the wall came back into focus.  Another knock sounded, and this time Graham’s voice carried through the door.  “I know you’re in there, you lazy sod.”

The prospect of relief from the endless churning of his mind brought him to his feet so quickly he tripped on the edge of the carpet and nearly banged his head on the doorframe.  He found himself face-to-face with a displeased Graham.

“Anna at the café said you looked ‘lost’.”

“Hello to you, too.”

“Move over, I brought wine.”

Richard couldn’t think of anything to say but: “It’s two in the afternoon.”

“Like that ever stopped you before.”  It would have been useless to protest that that was a bad time in his life and that he was long past the point of drinking himself to sleep.  Richard would have refused, but it appeared that his friend had gone out of his way to find a good vintage and besides, perhaps the haze of a good large glass would take the edge off his racing heart.  “Where are your glasses?  Fuck it, here.”

Graham at least had the decency to wait until they were seated on the couch with mugs full of red to launch his inquiry.  “So what’s got you so down in the mouth?  You look like you were up all night, and I doubt you’d look like that if you’d been getting laid.”

“For God’s sake.”  Richard couldn’t even find it in himself to be agitated with the umpteenth reference to a sex life he didn’t even have.  His lack of commitment was noted, and Graham raised an expectant eyebrow.

“Well, spit it out, then.”  Graham nudged him expectantly.

Despite their long friendship and the knowledge that Graham would most certainly offer fresh perspective, Richard was suddenly loath to talk about Lee.  It had been his secret for so long—tender memories and growing fondness he kept safe in his heart for long days and silent nights—that it seemed strange to share it with anyone, even Graham.  Sensing his reluctance, Graham’s next urging was a kick to the ankle.  Richard groaned.  “They’re going to sell him off.”

There was a beat of silence.  “Not following.”

The wine slid down his throat to warm his belly.  “Lee.  Last night—I overheard.  Let me start over.”

“At the beginning usually helps.  Here, I’ll just get the bottle.”

“You’re trying to get me drunk.”

“I’m trying to wipe that sorry look off your face.”  Graham ruffled his hair as he passed behind the couch, and returned in short order to refill both their cups.  “Now, the beginning.  Who’s doing what to who?”

“’Whom’.  Lee.  He’s the—”

“I know who Lee is.”

“The university, or Dr. Lee, the professor in charge of the research project, he’s selling him off to some foreign bloke.  They’re not letting him go.”

Graham chuckled.  “Some foreign bloke who’s not you?”

The implication wounded him.  “I don’t want to _buy_ —”

“I’m messing you about, Rich.  I know you don’t.”

Richard held his mouthful a moment.  “From where I’m sitting, this doesn’t look much like a laughing matter.  He’s not a thing to be bartered.  And they hit him.”

The look on Graham’s face said he remained unconvinced that Lee was a person and Richard realized that his friend had never had a chance to see how quickly Lee learned, the endless playful curiosity and the way he teased without any intent to wound, the flick of his eyes as Richard tried to teach him to read, the scrawl of hastily-learned letters displayed in a little sand box for Richard to read before they ate.  The memories only made his predicament seem more urgent.  “You don’t believe me.”

“It’s not that, Rich.  It’s that I worry.  You’re in over your head with this one.  He isn’t some pretty girl who turns out to have lost the plot or some exec with a suit that looks way too good on him.  He’s not even human.”

“I suppose that depends on how you define ‘humanity’,” Richard said sourly.  Already he regretted opening himself up to yet another well-meaning lecture from his resident caretaker about his habit of going head-over-heels for all the wrong ones.

Graham wasn’t falling for it.  “You know what I mean.  This could only ever end badly, and you knew it, and you did it anyway.”  He refilled his own glass.  “And I let you.”

“I’m a grown man, you know, and very capable of making decisions.”  Not good ones, half the time, as Richard knew.  Graham knew it too, and didn’t even bother to say it out loud.  He was too idealistic by half, too resigned to a life of loneliness and unwilling to admit it, always choosing someone who would disappoint him in the end.  This time was different; Richard hadn’t gone into this imagining anything or looking for anything but an oddity.  He wanted to say something in his own defense, but Graham would only remind him that this time was no different from the last: no matter what bond they had, he and Lee could never share a world.  He would tell Richard that he should have nipped it in the bud before it had a chance to flower; he would tell Richard that he should have stopped visiting.  Embarrassment made him rest his face in his hands and he groaned.  “Please don’t say anything.”

“The only thing I’m saying is you knew this had to happen one way or another.”

“I knew this had to happen _one way_ ,” Richard insisted.  “The right way.  He oughn’t be penned up in some weirdo’s collectors’ hall for the rest of his life!  You of all people—”

Graham held up one hand to silence him.  “I’m not saying that what they’re doing is right, if it’s what they’re doing at all.  You said you only overheard—”

Feeling even more sour than usual and wishing he could uproot his friend from the sofa and nudge him out the door, Richard said: “There wasn’t room for misunderstanding or projection in what I overheard.  Tell me you trust that much.”

“All right, then.  It’s not right.  But Rich, have you thought of the trouble you could be in?  And if it’s worse, if it’s under the table, I’m not just talking about the law.  Something worse than sanctions could happen to you.”

“”Maybe you ought to have taken more care with what might happen to me before you picked a fight with a gaggle of drunken idiots in the middle of the night and knocked me into the Hudson.”

The moment the words were out, Richard wished he could take them back.  It wasn’t fair to open a wound he knew was there.  He could read regret and hurt in Graham’s silence and opened his mouth to apologize.  His friend waved him off, so instead he said: “I’m not asking you for anything, Graham, including approval.  You don’t understand, and that’s fine, but please believe me when I say that whatever it is you want to say to talk me out of saving him best stay unsaid.  I’ve got to do something.  Anything.”

“And I can’t let you go it alone, you know that.”  Graham sighed, but Richard didn’t sense any reticence.  He grinned at his uncustomary victory.  “Suppose it’s about time you were the one dragging me into trouble, eh?”

 

_5:30_

Graham had left him with a long embrace and a few smacks on the back.  “At eleven, then.”

The approach to the lab and passage amid the stream of students was nerve-wracking as it hadn’t been in ages; his heart skittered with panic rather than anticipation.  The idea that he was caught already, that his guilt was writ across his face, would not leave him no matter how many people he failed to make an impression on as they hurried from class to find dinner or work uniforms or friends elsewhere on campus.  Only by running their half-baked plan through his mind over and over again did Richard keep his sanity.

When he found the lab just as it was every afternoon and Dr. Lee absent as usual, Richard relaxed.

Evie gave him a cheeky wink as he entered and he struggled to return a friendly smile as he offered her a package of fine chocolates.  The wine he would keep for worthier company, such as one that currently turned flips and leapt from the water in joy to see him.

The flash and obvious glee in Lee’s face chased darker thoughts from his mind; the second smile he did not have to force.

“Go,” Evie whispered, her sorrow evident in the words.  She turned the little box over and over, fingers toying with the pink ribbon in which it was bound as if she couldn’t decide whether she was forgiven.  She wasn’t, but Richard found it hard to hold grudges and her obvious agony over the situation they had found themselves in went a long way to dousing the simmering resentment in him.  “I’ve invited everyone out tonight so you can be alone.  In case…in case we don’t….”

“Don’t,” Richard warned beneath his breath.

She fell silent and waved him off, bending over a clipboard on her desk, though the feigned concentration couldn’t hide the worry darkening her features.

“Richard,” Lee said between pants; his acrobatics had robbed him of breath and brought color into his face.  He grinned crookedly and held out his arms as if he could pull Richard up the steps and onto the platform faster.  “I miss you.”

The laugh that bubbled up unbidden was balm for his fretful hours and he let Lee rub the tips of their noses together even though they were in full view of the students still lingering over their stations.  “It’s only been a day,” he said.

“Too long, too much,” Lee said.  He splashed as Richard discarded his shoes and rolled up his trouser legs and climbed onto the platform.  “You bring me something?”  As if he knew how to get his way—and he did—he rested his chin on Richard’s knee and bit him lightly, those sharp teeth scraping the linen of his trousers.

“Cheeky.”  He flicked water from his fingertips into Lee’s face and watched him cartwheel backward beneath the water to avoid the retaliation. “It’s for later.  Don’t look at me like that!”  He bent down and blew a breath into Lee’s ear just to feel him shudder.  “I promise it’s something nice,” he said: the truth and a promise.

Lee was full of energy, too riled up to linger at the edge of the platform.  In any other circumstances Richard would have been pleased to watch the graceful antics on display, but tonight with the scent of Lee in his nostrils and the thought of that tongue winding around his fingertips to taste chocolate melted by the heat of his body, he kept glancing over his shoulder to see whether anyone else had gone.

When Evie clapped her hands loudly and declared that it was time for all the stragglers to join her for a celebratory round or two at The Sinkhole so they could get properly hungover in preparation for their last few days on the project, Richard was ready to forgive her.  She gave him a small smile as she ushered everyone out and turned off the brightest of the overhead lights.  Lee bid her a cheerful goodbye, but as soon as the heavy door shut behind them all he was out of the water, his mouth pressed clumsily against Richard’s own.

“Too long,” he repeated.  His weight bore them both down and in his shock Richard could do little but let his legs fall apart to accommodate the heavy weight pressing him down and the hot mouth sucking all the air from his lungs.  When he thought he might black out, Lee moved away and made the trace long lines with tongue and teeth over the tender skin of his throat, every pass punctuated with Lee’s own little nuzzles, as if he couldn’t resist mixing their two affections.  _Clever boy_ , Richard thought woozily.  “Rich.”  That voice poured over him.

“Hold up,” Richard breathed out.  “Lee, wait.  Stop.”

The looked he received was full of recrimination and confusion.  Lee cocked his head. 

“I brought you something,” Richard tried to explain, though it was difficult when he couldn’t inhale properly.  His body was aching for touch.

Frustration flashed across Lee’s face and he said: “ _I know._ ”  He leaned in for another kiss only to run straight into Richard’s hands.  It would be only too easy to give in and spend the entire evening languishing under Lee’s soft caresses, but there was more Richard wanted.  That time was running out only made it more urgent that he savor every moment in every way he could.  Resisting the flighty fingertips dancing across his hipbones and working at his belt was one of the most difficult things Richard had ever done.  “You don’t come in,” Lee urged, opening his belt.  “I promise.  _Promise._   Let me—”

Richard’s button and zipper were undone by the time he got the cork free and the fruity aroma hit his nostrils as Lee’s questing fingers eased into his pants.  The webbing between his fingers was frigid and soft as satin as those fingers curved around his length and he thrust up and nearly spilled.

“Damn it,” he breathed as wine tricked down his wrist and into his cuff.

Lee only laughed as him and dragged the hand down to lick up the wine, his tongue twining around Richard’s fingers as his fingers twined around Richard’s cock.  It was all too much; Richard closed his eyes and inhaled sharply to keep from thrusting up into that chill touch.

“Good,” Lee told him.  He lapped the tender inside of Richard’s wrist—every delicate flick of his tongue echoed the thundering pulse beneath.  “Richard?”

“Hm?”

“I love you.”

The words were more shocking than the feeling of the tongue flicking between his fingers and Richard sat bolt upright, nearly dislodging Lee and sending him back into the water.  Lee looked at him perplexedly and said: “Do you love me?”

“Who taught you that?” Richard asked hoarsely.  The smile slid from Lee’s face to be replaced by confusion and worry.  “Lee?”  With no answer immediately forthcoming, he sighed Lee’s name.

“Evie,” Lee said.  He sunk lower in the water.  With slow movements he sent waves up over Richard’s knees to soak his trousers; they stuck to the persistent erection pressing the fabric out and Lee kept glancing from Richard’s flushing face to the fingers wound tightly around the neck of the bottle to the bulge between his legs.  “Is it wrong?”

“I don’t know.”  But Richard did know.  The anticipatory beat of his heart when he thought of Lee, the comfortable warmth in his breast when he watched the man turning tricks in the water, the way he longed to smooth the pad of his thumb along the swell of that lower lip when Lee pouted it out to urge him closer to the water’s edge.  “Do you know what it means?”

Lee nodded, pressing his mouth to the bend of Richard’s knee.  “I know.  Is it wrong?”

“No.”  Richard swallowed hard.  His knuckles throbbed around the bottle.  His cock pulsed in his trousers.  His heart leapt into his throat.  He nodded.  “It’s not wrong.  I hope.”

“Good.”  Water fell onto him the moment before Lee did, drenching him, and he gasped into Lee’s mouth as their tongues slid together.  He leaned back to take in the sight: light from the window gleamed against every curve of slim muscle, shimmered in the droplets the slipped from beneath his jaw, down the defined pectorals, the corded arms and trim hips, the dewy sheen of iridescent tail shimmering green and gold in above the rippling surface.   Lee licked his nose playfully.  “Do you love me?”

The answer was breathy and immediate.  “Yes.”  Richard swallowed hard.  “Yes, I think I do.”

“Good.”

The wine was the best Richard had ever had.  He thought it probably had something to do with licking it from the corners of Lee’s mouth, from the tip of his tongue and the sharp angle of his teeth, from the well of his throat where it mingled with the salty sea imprinted in Lee’s skin and filled his head with images of that tail curving around him.

“You’re beautiful,” he gasped as Lee took his own draughts straight from the neck of the bottle and leaned over to taste the sweat gathering beneath Richard’s jaw.  His shirt was nearly off, but Lee wouldn’t move away long enough for him to get his arms free. 

Preening beneath the praise—somehow shy and glowing with satisfaction in the same moment—Lee butted their heads together.  “No,” he said, but it sounded like “I love you” again.

The chocolate was abandoned.  Richard might have craved to feel Lee’s tongue around his fingers, but he should have realized he didn’t need chocolate to get such a thing.  Lee was _all over him_ and he was drenched and every second brought him progressively closer to nakedness.  He thought he might be drunk but he couldn’t tell if it was the wine or Lee’s breath against his ribs.

“Off,” Lee insisted, jerking at his trousers.  They stuck, refusing to come down his legs—apparently Lee didn’t have the patience to get rid of them because a tortured sound escaped his throat and he delved back underwater to turn over backwards again and again, leaving a trail of tiny bubbles behind him.

The bottle slipped from numb fingers and plunged into the water; crimson clouds billowed out and swirled around the swirl of Lee’s tail—a contrast bright as blood on leaves and Lee blew it away from his face.  Richard couldn’t tell whether Lee’s tail was going more translucent or if his own bleary eyes were playing tricks on him.  He reached out, desperate to touch that slick tail, and slid almost all the way into the water.

The world went out from under him, but Lee was there—pressed firm and strong against his front—and the glass was cold against his back.  Lee delved a hand into his pants and took a firm grasp of him.  “Jesus God,” he breathed, and blew water out away from his mouth.  If this was drowning, he didn’t mind.

Lee was moaning softly against his neck; when they slipped below the water Richard couldn’t be bothered by it.  The movement of water lapping against hot skin, curling around loose clothes and tingling in his nostrils merged with the flutter of Lee’s fingertips against his closed eyes and the feel of what could only be the soft frills of his fins tickling the bottom of his feet sent Richard nearly mad. 

They surfaced and Lee held him pinned against the glass; Richard reached up and grabbed at the lip of the tank so he could wrap his legs around that long lean body and prevent escape.

Lee stared up at him, dazed and stroking fingers over his crapped hair.  The feeling raised gooseflesh all over him.  Salt on his tongue, in his eyes: everything burned.  “You,” he began, before he realized that there was nothing left to say.  His answer was a sigh, and Lee tucked his head beneath his jaw and lap up sweat and seawater and his hand slid up his arm to take hold of one wrist and pull his hand down beneath the water.  A brief moment of panic overtook him before Lee guided his hand between their bodies and shoved him harder against the glass.

His fingers encountered soft scales and, to his amazement, sharpish edges that stung but did not cut.

“What are you—”

Lee was breathing harshly against his skin when his hand encountered what was undeniably a cock.  A substantial cock, weighty in his hand and hot to the touch. 

When he’d allowed himself to imagine what might have happened had their unfortunate visitors not interrupted Lee’s eager exploration below his waist he had had only the haziest of images about how he might reciprocate.  Now, though, his mind snapped hard around the familiar feel of another man’s erection against his palm.  Relief followed closely on familiarity’s tail: this he could deal with.

He squeezed, pulled, and savored the groan that reverberated through his chest.  He heard a slow chat ringing in his ears like the slap of water against and over the lip of the tank: “Yes, yes, yes, please, yes, please, Richard.”  Lithe fingers played the same mantra against his ribs.  He arched out, away from the glass, into the touch and did not sink but an inch into the curve of a strong arm, a broad shoulder to prop his chin against.  It was softer than he’d imagined, pulsing between his fingers, silky, and Richard thought he was doing something wrong until Lee let out a groan straight from his gut.

His heart nearly stopped when Lee put a hand against his wrist to stop his motion and Richard leaned back, panting.  “What?”

Lee just beamed at him and kissed him messily, twining the incredible length of his tail around one of Richard’s dangling legs to draw him closer.  Those silken flumes brush the inside of Richard’s ankles, the tender curve behind his knee, the skin inside his thighs.  He wasn’t one to skip the foreplay, but somehow the ticklish little bushes combined with the slick slide of their cocks together was more titillating than any rain of kisses or imprint of teeth had ever been, the dance of Lee’s fingertips in half-understood words burning against his skin as if their meaning would sink into his bloodstream.

Lee lapped the water from his skin, and Richard yelped when he felt fluid pressure around his prick, a tugging, and caress—but Lee’s hands were pressed against his back, gripping his backside, pulling him closer.  Confusion surged with his pulse as the fluid contraction around him, hot and welcoming, writhing and wonderful, and then pressure like nothing he’d felt before.  A clench and release, and Lee moaning—loudly, have they both been so loud?—against his temple.

He could not see anything beneath the waves lapping his chin, but there was no steady thrust of hip, no expected clench and release of firm buttocks, only the slick place where he finds he’s disappeared into Lee’s body and the soft coil around his cock pulling and pulling until he dug his fingernails into Lee’s shoulders and freed his legs to wrap them around that slick tail and squeeze.

He pushed in further, felt the caresses stop, and gasped, “Did I hurt you?”

“Again.”  Lee mouthed wetly against his jaw, their lips brushing, teeth colliding, breath mingling.

So Richard clutched tightly to him, trusting Lee to keep him afloat, and moved through the water to push in deeper, savoring the groan Lee let out on every exhale, gritting his teeth and chasing the burn welling in his gut, the pressure in his balls, the tingle in every inch of skin.  Suddenly Lee went a bit limp and everything began to tingle.

Once, in university, a girl had popped a mint into her mouth before sucking him off, and Richard had thought that nothing could compare to that.  Whatever Lee was doing now banished the memory too oblivion the moment before he spilled so violently it was nearly painful.

He came to when water closed over his head and he opened his eyes in the water to see Lee sinking lower, sliding beneath, sliding free.  Even with water burning his eyes, he could see and unbelievable glimmer—evidence of what they’d just done—and the flush in Lee’s skin contrasting brightly with the shimmer of his tail—nearly glowing with color and limned with gold so bright it hurt the eyes.

With weak strokes and trembling limbs, Richard swam to the platform and pulled himself out to collapse, boneless and trembling, to catch his breath.  To his surprise, Lee crawled up beside him and laid half atop him, his weight grounding Richard against the solid platform beneath him.  Water lapped his toes and dripped from his skin; the slide of every drop raised every hair and peaked his nipples; the cold air made him shiver.

He realized Lee was stroking his back, a long sentence, a poem, a confession, something that made his eyes go bleary with an affection Richard wasn’t sure he could take.  He wondered whether his own face was writ with such obvious love and then decided he didn’t care.  He wrapped and arm around Lee’s waist to drag him closer, and kissed him one final time on the mouth.  Lee broke off to rub their noses together, gentle and playful, and Richard chuckled.

“Well.  That was different.”  He tapped Lee’s nose.  “You’re different.”

As his heart rate abated, he found his curiosity had not.  Resting his head against Lee’s shoulder and savoring the press of eloquent fingertips between his own shoulder blades, he slid a hand down Lee’s front.  Briefly he lingered at the place where soft skin gave way to soft scale, and descended lower.

There was a slit there that Richard, perhaps distracted, had never noticed before.  He slid his fingers over the opening—warm, warmer than he’d imagined—and Lee bucked up and gripped his wrist.  “Too much?” Richard asked, tipping his head up.  He slipped his fingers inside and encountered Lee’s softening prick and the fluid trapped there let out a slick sound before Richard’s fingertips began to tingle.  He laughed to himself as he felt Lee’s prick writhe against his fingers, mobile as his fingers and still sensitive, if the garbled moan Lee let out was anything to go by.  He groaned in appreciation and, without thinking, withdrew his fingers and brought them to his mouth to lap up a sample.  Lee looked at him, dazed, mouth agape, as he grinned.

“I have an idea for next time,” he said, dizzy with glee and deliberately avoiding the thought that this might be the first and the last time he and Lee lay like this—sated, entwined.

Lee flushed but grinned, and grabbed at his face to pull him into a kiss he didn’t surface from until Lee pulled away and his head snapped up.  After one baffled moment staring at Lee’s creased brows and his little cry of alarm before he slid off the platform and into the water to hide, the sound of heavy footsteps in the hall brought Richard back to his senses and he scrambled for his clothes.  It was a brief panicked struggle as the fabric clung to his damp skin.  He’d just got to the floor and was shoving his shirt into his pants when he heard whistling and his panic turned into annoyance.  Was it eleven already?

A large shadow appeared through the misted glass of the door a second before it opened.

“Could you have been any louder?” Richard hissed.  The door whispered shut and the bolt fell audibly into the latch.  Just to be ornery, Graham didn’t bother to lower his voice.

“Think you’d be grateful for the ride home, Rich.  Never know who’s lurking in the shadows at this hour.”  He grinned when his eyes drifted over to where Lee was flopped hallway over the edge of his tank and peering curiously at this new visitor.

“Evie does not say someone is coming,” he observed.  They seemed equally intrigued with one another and Richard had to smother a twinge of jealousy.  That fascination had been directed at him once, but replaced by something more comfortable.  Lee leaned closer as Graham approached; his gaze flicked from one to the other and then back again as he catalogued their differences.  Finally he said: “You are very big than Richard.”

“Smart one, isn’t he?”

Lee bristled before Richard could speak and his grimace revealed his array of sharp teeth.  Graham whistled and held up his hands.  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“This is Graham,” Richard said.  He gestured for Graham to climb the scaffolding and followed him up.  “He’s—”

“A part of your rescue team, princess.”

Richard wasn’t sure whether the pet name went without comment because Lee was in a forgiving mood or because he couldn’t understand it; Richard banked on the latter and hoped Graham kept on Lee’s good side.  He didn’t want to see anyone lose fingers.

“Friends?”  Lee pointed first at Richard, and then at Graham, and after a brief moment Richard realized that the unfamiliar look on that transparent face was a mirror of his own irrational jealousy.  Heart still thrumming and blood still up, Richard let loose a disbelieving lap.

“Not friends like you.”  Graham grinned.  The gesture that accompanied the teasing left little doubt what he was talking about ad drew a bashful grin and flush to Lee’s face.  “Just friends.”

“Good.”

 

_12:51 p.m._

The ride home was quiet, for which Richard was thankful.  He was also thankful that Graham had brought the car; exhaustion both mental and physical would have made the late-night tube ride home more than a bit difficult.  The city unfolded in military lines of glimmering lights, the laughter of its night-owl denizens drifting to him above the hum of tires on the road.  Richard rested his forehead against the cool glass as if it would help him return to a more seemly state.

“So you did it, then?  Last chance before he’s gone?”

For a moment, Richard wasn’t sure Graham had spoken in English.  When his mind caught up with the words, they still made no sense.  “What?”

Graham pulled up at a red light and turned to grin at him.  “You know.”  He made an obscene gesture.

Richard flushed hotly and found he had neither words nor the faculties to use them.

“There’s some merit in that saying, aren’t there?  ‘Methinks thou dost protest too much.”

The only thing Richard could summon to mind was: “That’s not even a proper quote.”

“Right or not, you got some tonight, didn’t you?  How was it, then?  Come on, I demand details if payment for my part in this whole mess.”

It took everything Richard had not to swear at him, but at least he had pleasant memories to retreat into, and the taste of Lee still on his tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't kill me! I have a new baby and his waggly tail and slobbery kisses and need to run four miles a day are very distracting. Almost as distracting as my inability to write porn after too long lingering over cheesy cross-special rom-com shit.


End file.
